Semiconductor microcavities with artificial single-photon emitters have become one of the backbones of semiconductor quantum optics. In many cases, however, technical and physical issues limit the study of optical fields to incoherently excited systems. We analyze the model of an incoherently driven two-level system in a single-mode cavity. The specific structure of the applied master equation yields a recurrence relation for the steady-state values of correlations of the intracavity field and the emitter. We provide boundary conditions that permit a systematic solution which is numerically less demanding than standard methods. The method allows us to directly infer reasonable cutoff conditions from the system parameters. Different cavity systems from previous experiments are analyzed in terms of field correlation functions which can be measured via homodyne correlation measurements. We find that nonclassical correlations occur in systems of moderate quantum-dot--cavity coupling rather than strong coupling. Our boundary conditions also allow us to derive analytical results for the overall quantum state and its higher-order moments. We obtain very good approximations for the full quantum state of the field in terms of the characteristic functions. It turns out that for every physically reasonable set of system parameters, the state of the intracavity field is nonclassical.
Semiconductor microcavities with artificial single-photon emitters have become one of the backbones of semiconductor quantum optics. In many cases, however, technical and physical issues limit the study of optical fields to incoherently excited systems. We analyze the model of an incoherently driven two-level system in a single-mode cavity. The specific structure of the applied master equation yields a recurrence relation for the steady-state values of correlations of the intracavity field and the emitter. We provide boundary conditions that permit a systematic solution which is numerically less demanding than standard methods. The method allows us to directly infer reasonable cutoff conditions from the system parameters. Different cavity systems from previous experiments are analyzed in terms of field correlation functions which can be measured via homodyne correlation measurements. We find that nonclassical correlations occur in systems of moderate quantum-dot--cavity coupling rather than strong coupling. Our boundary conditions also allow us to derive analytical results for the overall quantum state and its higher-order moments. We obtain very good approximations for the full quantum state of the field in terms of the characteristic functions. It turns out that for every physically reasonable set of system parameters, the state of the intracavity field is nonclassical.
We theoretically investigate the optical response of a quantum dot, embedded in a microcavity and incoherently excited by pulsed pumping. The exciton and biexciton transition are off-resonantly coupled with the left- and right-polarized mode of the cavity, while the two-photon resonance condition is fulfilled. Rich behaviours are shown to occur in the time dependence of the second-order correlation functions which refer to counter-polarized photons. The corresponding time-averaged quantities, which are accessible to experiments, confirm that such a dot-cavity system behaves as a good emitter of single, polarization-correlated photon pairs.
We consider an optical cavity containing a single two-level atom driven on resonance by an external laser source.1 We focus on the limit of weak excitation where the dynamic response of this system is governed by just three parameters: the atom-field coupling constant g, spontaneous emission rate γ for the atom, and cavity decay rate κ. The statistics of the transmitted light are analyzed as a function of g, γ, and κ, in terms of the second-order correlation function g(2)(τ), and the quadrature variances measured in a homodyne detection scheme. Squeezing and photon antibunching exist over a wide range of parameters. For γ ~ κ, the system can exhibit an oscillatory response, even when the mean intracavity photon number is much less than unity.2 The oscillations can be understood in terms of the coupling between the free atom-field eigenstates |0,−>, |0,+>, and |1,−>. The oscillation frequency is determined by the energy level splitting produced between the degenerate one-quantum states |0,+> and |1,−> by the atom-field interaction. The second-order correlation function can exhibit a novel nonclassical effect, where, for g(2)(0) ≠ 0, at some finite delay τ0, the correlation function dips exactly to zero—g(2)(τ0) = 0.
We study the dynamics of a quantum dot embedded in a three-dimensional microcavity in the strong coupling regime in which the quantum dot exciton has an energy close to the frequency of a confined cavity mode. Under the continuous pumping of the system, the confined electron and hole can recombine either by spontaneous emission through a leaky mode or by stimulated emission of a cavity mode that can escape from the cavity. The numerical integration of a master equation including all these effects gives the dynamics of the density matrix. By using the quantum regression theorem, we compute the first- and second-order coherence functions required to calculate the photon statistics and the spectrum of the emitted light. Our main result is the determination of a range of parameters in which a state of cavity modes with Poissonian or sub-Poissonian (nonclassical) statistics can be built up within the microcavity. Depending on the relative values of pumping and rate of stimulated emission, either one or two peaks close to the excitation energy of the dot and/or to the natural frequency of the cavity are observed in the emission spectrum. The physics behind these results is discussed.
In this paper, exciting progress of quantum optics in solid state is reviewed. The focus is on semiconductor microcavities with self-assembled quantum dots embedded in the active layer. Due to enormous progress in semiconductor nanotechnology, such photonic structures have become a model system for the study of quantum optics on a scalable and integrable technology platform with high potential for future applications in quantum information technology. Quantum optical phenomena have become accessible due to 3-D confinement of light and matter on the length scale of their wavelength in state-of-the-art semiconductor micro- and nanostructures. This confinement leads to a quantization of the associated photonic and electronic energy levels and requires a quantum mechanical description of the system in the framework of cavity quantum electrodynamics (cQED). This approach considers the dipole interaction between two-level quantum emitters and discrete photonic states of a microcavity. Within the well-known Jaynes-Cummings model, the dipole interaction is described in terms of a coherent exchange of energy between the emitter and the resonator mode. This coherent interaction in the so-called strong coupling regime of cQED is reflected in a normal mode splitting, the vacuum Rabi splitting, of the involved modes and represents a central feature of quantum optics in solid state. Another important example of quantum optics in semiconductor nanostructures is the generation of nonclassical light in specific quantum devices. Of particular interest is the realization of Fock states which represent states containing a well-defined number of photons. Single-photon sources, for instance, allow for the generation of single photons on demand, which is highly desirable for quantum communication systems. In this context, this review paper will present recent experimental studies of quantum optics in solid state. This paper is meant for readers who would like to become familiar with this topic and for experts being interested in the progress in this field. It will cover a broad range of studies ranging from examples of fundamental light-matter interaction in the quantum limit to devices capable of emitting single photons and entangled photon pairs on demand.
We investigate theoretically two-photon processes in a microcavity containing one quantum dot in the strong-coupling regime. The cavity mode can be tuned to resonantly drive the two-photon transition between the ground and the biexciton states while the exciton states are far-off resonance due to the biexciton binding energy. We study the steady state of the quantum dot and cavity field in presence of a continuous incoherent pumping. We identify the regime where the system acts as two-photon emitter and discuss the feasibility and performance of realistic single quantum-dot devices for two-photon lasing.
Multi-photon lasing has been realized in systems with strong nonlinear interactions between emitters and cavity modes, where single-photon processes are suppressed. Coherence between the internal states of a quantum emitter, or among multiple emitters, plays a key role. Such continuous nonclassical sources of light can find applications in quantum computation, quantum sensing, quantum metrology, and quantum communication.
This thesis explores the multi-photon lasing phenomena in various quantum dot-photonic crystal cavity quantum electrodynamic (QED) setups. Exciton-phonon interactions are inevitable in such systems and are incorporated using the polaron-transformed master equation. The Born-Markov approximation is employed to obtain the reduced density matrix rate equation. Using quantum laser theory, we derived the Scully-Lamb laser rate equations and evaluated the single- and multi-photon excess emission rates defined as the difference between emission and absorption rates into the cavity mode without mean-field approximations. We investigated cooperative two-photon lasing, correlated emission lasing, hyperradiant lasing, non-degenerate two-mode two-photon lasing, and continuous variable entanglement in open quantum systems with single or multiple semiconductor quantum dots (two-level, three-level, and four-level) driven coherently/incoherently and coupled to single/ bimodal cavities.