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Physical Review Letters

Quantum Correlations and Intraband Coherences in Semiconductor Cavity QED

Y.-S. Lee, Theodore B. Norris, M. Kira, F. Jahnke, S. W. Koch, G. Khitrova, H. M. Gibbs

Published Dec 20, 1999• 41 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A fully quantized theory of optical interactions with semiconductors reveals quantum correlations between the field and carrier density. These quantum correlations lead to intraband coherences which live much longer than the interband dephasing time; the correlations are observed as oscillations in the time-resolved reflectivity in a pump-probe experiment on a normal-mode microcavity. Coherent control of the microcavity normal modes using phase-locked pump pulses enables considerable enhancement of the intraband oscillations due to quantum interference; the detailed phase dependence is well reproduced by the theory.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.83.5338

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A fully quantized theory of optical interactions with semiconductors reveals quantum correlations between the field and carrier density. These quantum correlations lead to intraband coherences which live much longer than the interband dephasing time; the correlations are observed as oscillations in the time-resolved reflectivity in a pump-probe experiment on a normal-mode microcavity. Coherent control of the microcavity normal modes using phase-locked pump pulses enables considerable enhancement of the intraband oscillations due to quantum interference; the detailed phase dependence is well reproduced by the theory.
The normal modes in a nonperturbatively coupled quantum-well semiconductor microcavity are linear superpositions of the QW exciton and cavity mode when the QW exciton transition is resonant with the cavity mode. When the lower normal mode is excited by a phase-locked pair of optical pulses, the nonlinear response of a probe pulse tuned to the upper mode is controlled. Thus the normal modes are coupled in their nonlinear optical response due to the nonlinearity of the exciton underlying the two normal modes. The cavity enhancement of the excitonic nonlinearity gives rise to a large signal; modulating the relative phase of the excitation pulses produces a differential reflectivity of up to 10%. Besides the coherent control of normal modes which is explainable with in the frame of semiclassical models, we observe a purely quantum mechanical phenomenon in our system. The quantum correlations between the field and carrier density lead to intraband coherences which live much longer than the interband dephasing time.
Summary form only given. We demonstrate that quantum correlations between the cavity field and the carrier density in an InGaAs quantum-well (QW) microcavity can be observed in a novel pump-probe experiment. In our investigations, the lower normal mode of a microcavity is excited with a pair of identical phase-locked pump pulses near normal incidence. The transient reflectivity of a weak probe pulse tuned to the upper normal mode is measured. We will show that long-lived oscillations are observed, which originate in the pump-induced quantum correlations, and that the phase and amplitude of the coherences can be controlled via the relative phase of the pump pulses.
We have carried out an extensive series of experiments on coherent control of semiconductor quantum microcavities. In these experiments, a phase-locked femtosecond optical pulse pair is used to excite the lower normal mode (cavity polariton), thereby controlling the reflection of a signal pulse tuned to the upper normal mode. Such a controlled reflection may be used as an all-optical switch with picosecond switching time. We have demonstrated that the effect of the microcavity is to provide a huge enhancement of the coherently controlled response compared to bare quantum wells. We have investigated in detail the microscopic physical processes responsible for the nonlinear optical response; the measured response fits well with theories based on the electron-hole Hamiltonian in the coherent-X(5) and 2nd-Born approximations. The physical limits to the coherent control are determined by excitation-induced dephasing; this limits the applicability of the switch in practical terms. We have discovered that the use of phase-locked excitation pulses is that one can generate novel intraband coherences in the quantum wells, arising from true quantum correlations between the cavity field and the carrier populations. The discovery of this effect was perhaps the first genuinely quantum optical effect observed in semiconductor microcavities.