All-optical control of weak-light transport and Fano-like resonance using control-probe technique in a quantum-dot-pillar microcavity system

Abstract

Control of light by light is a current research topic and is important for a variety of fundamental studies and practical applications. Here, we put forward a chip-scale scheme for all-optical control of small-signal photon transport and Fano-like lineshape in a coupled quantum-dot-pillar microcavity system based on a control-probe technique. Specifically, a bichromatic input light field, which consists of a weak probe field and a tunable control field, is applied to simultaneously drive the pillar cavity mode (called the control-probe technique) and both its reflectivity from and transmittivity through the pillar cavity constitute two output channels (i.e., a reflectivity signal channel and a transmittivity signal channel). We derive full analytical expressions for the reflectivity and transmittivity coefficients via a perturbation method. Using experimentally realistic parameters, theoretical analysis shows that the output probe light of the reflectivity and transmittivity channels can be switched on or off by simply turning on or off the control light field. Hence, the present system can be utilized to realize all-optical switching of the probe light by the control light with high switching contrast ∼1 by means of these two output channels. Interestingly, the reflectivity channel and the transmittivity channel are complementary and offer versatile applications in a two-channel switching. In addition, it is shown that the strong asymmetric Fano lineshape can be generated by properly tuning the frequency of the control light field in this control-probe scheme. The present investigation may be used for developing novel all-optical switching and tunable Fano devices on-chip.