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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)

Optical nonlinearity with few-photon pulses using a quantum dot-pillar cavity device

Vivien Loo, Christophe Arnold, Olivier Gazzano, Aristide Lemaître, Isabelle Sagnes, O. Krebs, Paul H. Voisin, P. Senellart, L. Lanco

Published May 1, 2013• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A single two-level system constitutes an extremely non-linear optical medium, where the interaction with a first single photon modifies the transmission probability for a second photon. The main difficulty to implement a single photon switch using this property is to ensure that a gate single photon will interact with the quantum emitter with a near-unity probability. In the solid state, all-optical switching has been demonstrated using photonic crystals or microdisks coupled to quantum dots, but these systems were not well externally matched: hundreds of incident photons were thus required to trigger the optical nonlinearity.

DOI
10.1109/cleoe-iqec.2013.6801871

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A single two-level system constitutes an extremely non-linear optical medium, where the interaction with a first single photon modifies the transmission probability for a second photon. The main difficulty to implement a single photon switch using this property is to ensure that a gate single photon will interact with the quantum emitter with a near-unity probability. In the solid state, all-optical switching has been demonstrated using photonic crystals or microdisks coupled to quantum dots, but these systems were not well externally matched: hundreds of incident photons were thus required to trigger the optical nonlinearity.
A single semiconductor quantum dot that is strongly coupled to a photonic crystal nanocavity yields optical nonlinearities at the single photon level. The promise of quantum information processing is driving developments in several different physical implementations. Photons are attractive as carriers of quantum information be-cause they can travel long distances without losing their infor-mation through interactions with their environment. However, their passive nature can be a problem in applications such as the construction of logic gates, where it is necessary for two or more photons to interact. This interaction requires a nonlinear optical medium. Particularly strong nonlinearities are achieved when photons drive an emitter near its resonance frequency, and this nonlinearity is even greater if the photon is confined near the emitter in an optical cavity.
We coherently probe a quantum dot that is strongly coupled to a photonic crystal nano-cavity by scattering of a resonant laser beam. The coupled system's response is highly nonlinear as the quantum dot saturates with nearly one photon per cavity lifetime. This system enables large amplitude and phase shifts of a signal beam via a control beam, both at single photon levels. We demonstrate photon-photon interactions with short pulses in a system that is promising for ultra-low power switches and two-qubit quantum gates.
Giant optical nonlinearity is observed under both continuous wave and pulsed excitation in a deterministically coupled quantum dot-micropillar system, in a pronounced strong-coupling regime. Using absolute reflectivity measurements we determine the critical intracavity photon number as well as the input and output coupling efficiencies of the device. Thanks to a near-unity input-coupling efficiency, we demonstrate a record nonlinearity threshold of only 8 incident photons per pulse. The output-coupling efficiency is found to strongly influence this nonlinearity threshold. We show how the fundamental limit of single-photon nonlinearity can be attained in realistic devices, which would provide an effective interaction between two coincident single-photons.
Photonic information processing requires giant optical non-linearities to implement logic gates between photons and optical switches at the single photon level. A very promising non-linear medium is a "one dimensional atom", that is a directional high-finesse cavity containing a resonant two-level system in the Purcell regime. We aim at experimentally demonstrating this effect using a single quantum dot in a symmetric micropillar, the directionality of the micropillar ensuring the one-dimensionality of the problem.
A quantum dot strongly coupled to a photonic crystal resonator is used to investigate cavity quantum electro- dynamics phenomena in solid state physics. Nonlinear optical phenomena such as photon blockade and photon induced tunneling are observed in this system. The nonlinearity of this system is sensitive to intra-cavity photon numbers close to unity, and it has been used to demonstrate conditional phase shifts of 28° at a single photon level and a second order auto-correlation of g2(0) = 0.9 in the photon blockade regime.
Low power optical nonlinearities are a crucial requirement for data routing and next generation all-optical processing. The majority of nonlinear optical devices to date exploit weak nonlinearities from a large ensemble of atomic systems, resulting in both high power dissipation and a large device footprint. Quantum dots (QDs) coupled to photonic crystals can provide significant reduction in both device size and power dissipation. The interaction between these two systems creates extremely strong light-matter interaction owing to the tight optical confinement of photonic crystals and large oscillator strengths of QDs. Such interactions enable optical nonlinearities near the single photon level. In this work we investigate the nonlinear properties of QDs coupled to photonic crystals. We demonstrate large optical Stark shift with only 10 photons. We then propose and demonstrate a novel photonic circuit that can route light on a chip with extremely low optical powers.