Physical Review B
Direct detection of time-resolved Rabi oscillations in a single quantum dot via resonance fluorescence
John R. Schaibley, A. P. Burgers, Gregory A. McCracken, Duncan G. Steel, A. S. Bracker, Dan Gammon, Lu Jeu Sham
Abstract
Optical Rabi oscillations are coherent population oscillations of a two-level system coupled by an electric dipole transition when driven by a strong nearly resonant optical field. In quantum dot structures, these measurements have typically been performed as a function of the total pulse area $\ensuremath{\int}{\ensuremath{\Omega}}_{0}(t)\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{d}t$ where the pulse area varies as a function of Rabi frequency. Here, we report direct detection of the time-resolved coherent transient response of the resonance fluorescence to measure the time evolution of the optical Rabi oscillations in a single charged InAs quantum dot. We extract a decoherence rate consistent with the limit from the excited state lifetime.