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arXiv:2501.16747

Photon statistics of time dependent electronic excitation of spin injected quantum dots

Chiran Wijesundara, Jeffrey Carvalho, Yuan Lü, Tim O. Thomay

Published Jan 28, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

The time dynamics of spin-injected, electrically contacted quantum dots were investigated with a focus on the time evolution of photon statistics. Photon statistics can provide insights into whether the device functions as an effective single-photon emitter or exhibits higher-order emissions. Through these investigations, we found that the shape of the electrical excitation pulse has a direct impact on photon statistics. Specifically, the rising edge of the pulse corresponds to a significantly higher number of higher-order photon states, which decay much faster than single photons associated with the falling edge of the electrical pulse. This relationship implies that the pulse shape can be tailored to optimize the device as either a better single-photon source or a generator of higher-order photon states, with potential applications in creating deterministic higher-order photon Fock states. The ability to easily modify the pulse shape is a unique feature of electrically excited quantum dots.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2501.16747

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The time dynamics of spin-injected, electrically contacted quantum dots were investigated with a focus on the time evolution of photon statistics. Photon statistics can provide insights into whether the device functions as an effective single-photon emitter or exhibits higher-order emissions. Through these investigations, we found that the shape of the electrical excitation pulse has a direct impact on photon statistics. Specifically, the rising edge of the pulse corresponds to a significantly higher number of higher-order photon states, which decay much faster than single photons associated with the falling edge of the electrical pulse. This relationship implies that the pulse shape can be tailored to optimize the device as either a better single-photon source or a generator of higher-order photon states, with potential applications in creating deterministic higher-order photon Fock states. The ability to easily modify the pulse shape is a unique feature of electrically excited quantum dots.
Electrically spin-injected ensembles of InGaAs/GaAs quantum dots emit circularly polarized single photons, with the emission helicity determined by the spin polarization of the injected electrons. A ferromagnetic CoFeB spin-injection layer with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, combined with an MgO tunnel barrier, enables spin-polarized electron injection into the quantum-dot active region, resulting in circularly polarized photon emission at zero applied magnetic field. These devices realize direct spin-charge-photon conversion in an electrically driven, microelectronics-compatible quantum light source that operates without an external pump laser. Using an extended Hanbury Brown-Twiss interferometer with four detectors and time-tagged readout, we measure time-resolved photon-number statistics that resolve up to ∣2⟩|2\rangle∣2⟩ Fock states within a single excitation cycle. While single-photon (n=∣1⟩n=|1\ranglen=∣1⟩) emission tracks the electrical excitation pulse as expected, the two-photon (n=∣2⟩n=|2\ranglen=∣2⟩) statistics exhibit pronounced fluctuations at multiple temporal positions within the pulse. These fluctuations vanish upon demagnetization of the spin-injection layer, establishing a direct link between the multi-photon emission dynamics and the spin polarization of the injected carriers. The observations indicate that spin injection controls not only the helicity of the emitted photons but also higher-order temporal correlations of the emission. The behavior is phenomenologically captured by inserting both a variable excitation mechanism and a set of multi-emitter collapse operators within a stochastic wave function evolution. The platform thus opens a route to electrically driven, spin-controlled single and multi-photon Fock-state sources and provides a testbed for spin-conditioned multi-emitter dynamics in solid-state quantum light sources.
On demand single-photon and entangled-photon sources are key building-blocks for many proposed photonic quantum technologies. For practical device applications, epitaxially grown quantum dots (QDs) are of increasing importance due to their bright photon emission with sharp line width. Particularly, they are solid-state systems and can be easily embedded within a light-emitting diode (LED) to achieve electrically driven sources. Therefore, one would expect a full-fledged optoelectronic quantum network that is running on macroscopically separated, QD-based single- and entangled-photon devices. An all-electrically operated wavelength-tunable on demand single-photon source (SPS) is demonstrated first. The device consists of a LED in the form of self-assembled InGaAs QDs containing nanomembrane integrated onto a piezoelectric crystal. Triggered single photons are generated via injection of ultra-short electrical pulses into the diode, while their energy can be precisely tuned over a broad range of about 4.8 meV by varying the voltage applied to the piezoelectric crystal. High speed operation of this single-photon emitting diode up to 0.8 GHz is demonstrated. In the second part of this thesis, a fast strain-tunable entangled-light-emitting diode (ELED) is demonstrated. It has been shown that the fine structure splitting of the exciton can be effectively overcome by employing a specific anisotropic strain field. By injecting ultra-fast electrical pulses to the diode, electrically triggered entangled-photon emission with high degree of entanglement is successfully realized. A statistical investigation reveals that more than 30% of the QDs in the strain-tunable quantum LED emit polarization-entangled photon-pairs with entanglement-fidelities up to f+ = 0.83(5). Driven at the highest operation speed ever reported so far (400 MHz), the strain-tunable quantum LED emerges as unique devices for high-data rate entangled-photon applications. In the end of this thesis, on demand and wavelength-tunable LH single-photon emission from strain engineered GaAs QDs is demonstrated. Fourier-transform spectroscopy is performed, from which the coherence time of the LH single-photon emission is studied. It is envisioned that this new type of LH exciton-based SPS can be applied to realize an all-semiconductor based quantum interface in the foreseeable distributed quantum networks.
Quantum emitters in solid-state crystals have recently attracted a lot of attention due to their simple applicability in optical quantum technologies. The polarization of single photons generated by quantum emitters is one of the key parameters that play a crucial role in the applications, such as quantum computation that uses the indistinguishability of photons. However, the degree of single photon polarization is typically quantified using time-averaged photoluminescence intensity of single emitters, which provides limited information about the dipole properties in solids. In this work, we use single defects in hexagonal boron nitride and nanodiamond as efficient room-temperature single photon sources to reveal the origin and the temporal evolution of dipole orientation in solid-state quantum emitters. The angle of excitation and emission dipoles relative to the crystal axes are determined experimentally and then calculated using density functional theory, which results in characteristic angles for every specific defect that can be used as an efficient tool for defect identification and understanding their atomic structure. Moreover, the temporal polarization dynamics reveal a strongly modified linear polarization visibility that depends on the excited state decay time of individual excitation. This effect can be traced back potentially to the excitation of excess charges in the local crystal environment. Understanding such hidden time-dependent mechanisms can further be used to improve the performance of polarization-sensitive experiments, in particular that of quantum communication with single photon emitters.
Quantum dots (QDs) are an excellent single-photon source that can be combined with a spin quantum memory. Many quantum technologies require increased control over the characteristics of emitted photons. A powerful approach is to trigger coherent Raman photons from QDs with a Λ energy-level system, such as the spin singlet-triplet system in two coupled QDs. The temporal and spectral behavior of single Raman photons can be varied simply by modifying the excitation source. Here, we demonstrate control of the single-photon pulse shape in a solid-state system on a timescale much shorter than the radiative lifetime, in addition to control of the frequency and bandwidth. We achieve a photon pulse width of 80 ps-an order of magnitude shorter than the exciton lifetime. Possible applications include time-bin encoding of quantum information, matching photons from different sources, and efficient single-photon transfer in a quantum network.