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arXiv:2511.05065

Ultimate photon entanglement in biexciton cascade

V. N. Mantsevich, D. S. Smirnov, E. L. Ivchenko

cond-mat.mes-hallquant-phSubmitted Nov 7, 2025• Announced Nov 10, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

The polarization entanglement of photons emitted by semiconductor quantum dots is unavoidably limited by the spin fluctuations of the host lattice nuclei. To overcome this limitation, we develop a theory of entangled photon pair generation by a symmetric colloidal quantum dot mediated by a triplet exciton. We derive general analytical expressions for the concurrence as a function of the hyperfine interaction strength and show that it is intrinsically higher than that in conventional doublet-exciton systems such as self-assembled quantum dots. The concurrence sensitively depends on the shape anisotropy and the strain applied to a nanocrystal. In particular, we uncover a possibility of completely suppressing the detrimental effect of the hyperfine interaction due to the interplay between nanocrystal anisotropy and electron-hole exchange interaction. We argue that this represents the ultimate limit for the generation of entangled photon pairs by semiconductor quantum dots.

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9 pages, 3 figures

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The polarization entanglement of photons emitted by semiconductor quantum dots is unavoidably limited by the spin fluctuations of the host lattice nuclei. To overcome this limitation, we develop a theory of entangled photon pair generation by a symmetric colloidal quantum dot mediated by a triplet exciton. We derive general analytical expressions for the concurrence as a function of the hyperfine interaction strength and show that it is intrinsically higher than that in conventional doublet-exciton systems such as self-assembled quantum dots. The concurrence sensitively depends on the shape anisotropy and the strain applied to a nanocrystal. In particular, we uncover a possibility of completely suppressing the detrimental effect of the hyperfine interaction due to the interplay between nanocrystal anisotropy and electron-hole exchange interaction. We argue that this represents the ultimate limit for the generation of entangled photon pairs by semiconductor quantum dots.
Entangled photon sources are crucial for quantum optics, quantum sensing, and quantum communication. Semiconductor quantum dots generate on-demand entangled photon pairs via the biexciton-exciton cascade. However, the pair of photons are emitted isotropically in all directions, thus limiting the collection efficiency to a fraction of a percent. Moreover, strain and structural asymmetry in quantum dots lift the degeneracy of the intermediate exciton states in the cascade, thus degrading the measured entanglement fidelity. Here, we propose an approach for generating a pair of entangled photons from a semiconductor quantum dot by application of a quadrupole electrostatic potential. We show that the quadrupole electric field corrects for the spatial asymmetry of the excitonic wave function for any quantum dot dipole orientation and fully erases the fine-structure splitting without compromising the spatial overlap between electrons and holes. Our approach is compatible with nanophotonic structures such as microcavities and nanowires, thus paving the way towards a deterministic source of entangled photons with high fidelity and collection efficiency.
The quantum state of the emitted light from the cascade recombination of a biexciton in a quantum dot is theoretically investigated including exciton fine structure splitting (FSS) and electron-nuclear spin hyperfine interactions. In an ideal situation, the emitted photons are entangled in polarization making the biexciton recombination process a candidate source of entangled photons necessary for the growing field of quantum communication and computation. The coherence of the exciton states in real quantum dots is affected by a finite FSS and the hyperfine interactions via the effective magnetic field known as the Overhauser field. We investigate the influence of both sources of decoherence and find that although the FSS combined with a stochastic exciton lifetime is responsible for the main loss of entanglement, the two effects cannot be minimized independently of each other. Furthermore, we examine the possibility of reducing the decoherence from the Overhauser field by partially polarizing the nuclear spins and applying an external magnetic field. We find that an increase in entanglement depends on the degree as well as the direction of the nuclear spin polarization.
The entanglement between photon pairs generated from the biexciton cascade transition in a semiconductor quantum dot located in the vicinity of a metal nanoparticle is theoretically investigated. In the model scheme, the biexciton-exciton and exciton--ground-state transitions are assumed to be coupled to two principal plasmon modes of orthogonal polarizations. For a broad spectral window, because the horizontal and vertical spectra overlap, the biexciton and exciton photons are degenerate in energy. This allows us to overcome the natural splitting between the intermediate exciton states. Moreover, the degree of entanglement depends on the geometrical parameters of the system, i.e., the radius of the metal nanoparticle and the distance between the quantum dot and the nanoparticle. The results reveal that such a hybrid system profoundly modifies the photon entanglement even in the absence of strong coupling between the emitter and the metal nanosphere.
Excitons in quantum dots are excellent sources of polarization-entangled photon pairs, but a quantitative understanding of their interaction with the nuclear spin bath is still missing. Here we investigate the role of hyperfine energy shifts using experimentally accessible parameters and derive an upper limit to the achievable entanglement fidelity. Our results are consistent with all available literature, indicate that spin noise is often the dominant process limiting the entanglement in InGaAs quantum dots, and suggest routes to alleviate its effect.
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We report on the observation of nearly maximally entangled photon pairs from semiconductor quantum dots, without resorting to postselection techniques. We use GaAs quantum dots integrated on a patterned piezoelectric actuator capable of suppressing the exciton fine structure splitting. By using a resonant two-photon excitation, we coherently drive the biexciton state and demonstrate experimentally that our device generates polarization-entangled photons with a fidelity of 0.978(5) and a concurrence of 0.97(1) taking into account the nonidealities stemming from the experimental setup. By combining fine-structure-dependent fidelity measurements and a theoretical model, we identify an exciton spin-scattering process as a possible residual decoherence mechanism. We suggest that this imperfection may be overcome using a modest Purcell enhancement so as to achieve fidelities >0.99, thus making quantum dots evenly matched with the best probabilistic entangled photon sources.