Strong photon-photon interactions in solid state cavity QED

Harry J. Kimble

Jonathan R. Tischler

Alexander T. Papageorge, Arka Majumdar, Erik D. Kim +1 more

We theoretically study the bichromatic driving of a solid-state cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) system as a means of probing cavity dressed state transitions and observing the coherent interaction between the system and the light field. We show that this method can enable the observation of the higher order cavity dressed states, supersplitting and ac-Stark shift in a solid-state system comprised of a quantum dot (QD) strongly coupled to a photonic crystal cavity for the on- and far off-resonant cases. For the off-resonant case, phonons mediate off-resonant coupling between the QD and the photonic resonator, a phenomenon unique to solid-state cavity QED.

Makoto Yamaguchi, Takashi Asano, Susumu Noda

Solid-state cavity quantum-electrodynamics (QED) has great potential owing to advances such as coupled systems combining a nanocavity and a quantum dot (QD). These systems involve two photon-emission mechanisms: the Purcell effect in the weak coupling regime and vacuum Rabi-splitting in the strong coupling regime. In this paper, we describe a third emission mechanism based on the quantum anti-Zeno effect (AZE) induced by the pure-dephasing in a QD. This is significantly enhanced by the inherent characteristics of the nanocavity. This mechanism explains the origin of strong photon emission at a cavity mode largely detuned from a QD, previously considered a counterintuitive, prima facie non-energy-conserving, light-emission phenomenon. These findings could help in controlling the decay and emission characteristics of solid-state cavity QED, and developing solid-state quantum devices.

S. K. Bose, Moorad Alexanian

Thomas M. Niemczyk

The field of cavity quantum electrodynamics (cavity QED) studies the interaction between light and matter on a fundamental level: a single atom interacts with a single photon. If the atom-photon coupling is larger than any dissipative effects, the system enters the strong-coupling limit. A peculiarity of this regime is the possibility to form coherent superpositions of light and matter excitations - a kind of 'molecule' consisting of an atomic and a photonic contribution. The novel research field of circuit QED extends cavity QED concepts to solid-state based system. Here, a superconducting quantum bit is coupled to an on-chip superconducting one-dimensional waveguide resonator. Owing to the small mode-volume of the resonant cavity, the large dipole moment of the 'artificial atom' and the enormous engineering potential inherent to superconducting quantum circuits, remarkable atom-photon coupling strengths can be realized. This thesis describes the theoretical framework, the development of fabrication techniques and the implementation of experimental characterization techniques for superconducting quantum circuits for circuit QED applications. In particular, we study the interaction between superconducting flux quantum bits and high-quality coplanar waveguide resonators in the strong-coupling limit. Furthermore, we report on the first experimental realization of a circuit QED system operating in the ultrastrong-coupling regime, where the atom-photon coupling rate reaches a considerable fraction of the relevant system frequencies. In these experiments we could observe phenomena that can not be explained within the renowned Jaynes-Cummings model.