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Physical review. B, Condensed matter

Nonclassical light generation by Coulomb blockade of resonant tunneling

Ataç İmamoğlu, Y. Yamamoto

Published Dec 15, 1992• 30 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We show that the Coulomb blockade of resonant tunneling in semiconductor heterojunctions creates correlations between single-charge tunneling and single-photon emission events. When driven by a constant-current source, a mesoscopic p-i-i-i-n junction generates a regulated single-photon stream by single-electron-to-single-photon conversion. Under constant-voltage operation, the photon stream generated by the junction is antibunched and sub-Poissonian. The single-electron charging energy of the heterostructure has to exceed the width of the resonant subband and the characteristic energy of the thermal fluctuations for these correlations to be observable.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.46.15982

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Foreword

This paper addresses sub-Poissonian electronic and photonic noise generation in semiconductor junctions. Recent theoretical and technical advances in the understanding and generation of quantum noise-suppressed (‘quiet’) light have emphasised the links between photonic and electronic shot noise. Shot-noise suppression and single electron–photon control through the operation of the collective and single-electron Coulomb blockade mechanisms are described.

Australian Journal of Physics•Feb 2, 2000•2 citations
We show that the Coulomb blockade of resonant tunneling in semiconductor heterojunctions creates correlations between single-charge tunneling and single-photon emission events. When driven by a constant-current source, a mesoscopic p-i-i-i-n junction generates a regulated single-photon stream by single-electron-to-single-photon conversion. Under constant-voltage operation, the photon stream generated by the junction is antibunched and sub-Poissonian. The single-electron charging energy of the heterostructure has to exceed the width of the resonant subband and the characteristic energy of the thermal fluctuations for these correlations to be observable.
We describe a single-photon turnstile device that is based on a double-barrier mesoscopic p-i-n heterojunction driven by an alternating voltage source. In such a semiconductor device, Coulomb blockade and quantum confinement effects together can suppress the quantum fluctuations usually associated with electron and hole injection processes. It is therefore possible to generate heralded single-photon states without the need for high-impedance current source. The present scheme promises high- precision photon-flux state and current standards, as the repetition rate of the single-photon states and the magnitude of the junction current are determined by the frequency of the alternating voltage source.
We show that if a double-barrier mesoscopic p-i-n heterojunction is driven by an alternating voltage source, then Coulomb blockade and quantum confinement effects together can suppress the quantum fluctuations usually associated with electron and hole injection processes in semiconductors. It is therefore possible to generate heralded single-photon states without the need for a high-impedance current source. Since the frequency of the alternating voltage source determines the repetition rate of the single-photon states and the magnitude of the junction current, the present scheme promises high precision photon-flux and current standards.
Photon emission by tunneling electrons can be encouraged by locating a resonator close to the tunnel junction and applying an appropriate voltage bias. However, studies of normal metals show that the resonator also affects how the charges flow, facilitating processes in which correlated tunneling of two charges produces one photon. We develop a theory to analyze this kind of behavior in Josephson junctions by deriving an effective Hamiltonian describing processes where two Cooper pairs generate a single photon. We determine the conditions under which the transport is dominated by incoherent tunneling of two Cooper pairs, while also uncovering a regime of coherent double Cooper-pair tunneling. We show that the system can also display an unusual form of photon blockade and hence could serve as a single-photon source.
Recent scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) experiments reported single-molecule fluorescence induced by tunneling currents in the nanoplasmonic cavity formed by the STM tip and the substrate. The electric field of the cavity mode couples with the current-induced charge fluctuations of the molecule, allowing the excitation of photons. We investigate theoretically this system for the experimentally relevant limit of large damping rate κ for the cavity mode and arbitrary coupling strength to a single-electronic level. We find that for bias voltages close to the first inelastic threshold of photon emission, the emitted light displays antibunching behavior with vanishing second-order photon correlation function. At the same time, the current and the intensity of emitted light display Franck-Condon steps at multiples of the cavity frequency ω_{c} with a width controlled by κ rather than the temperature T. For large bias voltages, we predict strong photon bunching of the order of κ/Γ where Γ is the electronic tunneling rate. Our theory thus predicts that strong coupling to a single level allows current-driven nonclassical light emission.