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Fundamental properties of devices for quantum information technology

P. Nielsen

Published Apr 27, 2012• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

This thesis reports a theoretical investigation of the influence of the electronphonon interaction on semiconductor cavity quantum electrodynamical systems, specifically a quantum dot coupled to an optical microcavity. We develop a theoretical description of the decay dynamics of the quantum dot interacting with the cavity and the phonons. It is shown that the presence of the phonon interaction, fundamentally changes the spontaneous emission decay behavior of the quantum dot. Especially in the regime where the quantum dotcavity spectral detuning is significantly larger than any linewidth of the system, the effect of the phonon interaction is very pronounced. A simple approximate analytical expression for the quantum dot decay rate is derived, which predicts a strong asymmetry with respect to the quantum dot-cavity detuning at low temperatures, and allows for a clear interpretation of the physics. Furthermore, a study of the indistinguishability of single photons emitted from the coupled quantum dot-cavity system is performed, with special emphasis on non-Markovian decoherence due to the phonon interaction. We show that common theoretical approaches fail to predict the degree of indistinguishability, on both a qualitative and quantitative level, for experimentally relevant parameters regimes. The important role of non-Markovian effects in the shorttime regime, where virtual processes dominate the decoherence of the quantum dot-cavity system, is emphasized. Importantly, our investigations lead to a maximum achievable degree of indistinguishability, a prediction which eludes common approaches.

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This thesis reports a theoretical investigation of the influence of the electronphonon interaction on semiconductor cavity quantum electrodynamical systems, specifically a quantum dot coupled to an optical microcavity. We develop a theoretical description of the decay dynamics of the quantum dot interacting with the cavity and the phonons. It is shown that the presence of the phonon interaction, fundamentally changes the spontaneous emission decay behavior of the quantum dot. Especially in the regime where the quantum dotcavity spectral detuning is significantly larger than any linewidth of the system, the effect of the phonon interaction is very pronounced. A simple approximate analytical expression for the quantum dot decay rate is derived, which predicts a strong asymmetry with respect to the quantum dot-cavity detuning at low temperatures, and allows for a clear interpretation of the physics. Furthermore, a study of the indistinguishability of single photons emitted from the coupled quantum dot-cavity system is performed, with special emphasis on non-Markovian decoherence due to the phonon interaction. We show that common theoretical approaches fail to predict the degree of indistinguishability, on both a qualitative and quantitative level, for experimentally relevant parameters regimes. The important role of non-Markovian effects in the shorttime regime, where virtual processes dominate the decoherence of the quantum dot-cavity system, is emphasized. Importantly, our investigations lead to a maximum achievable degree of indistinguishability, a prediction which eludes common approaches.
We investigate the effect of electron-phonon interactions on the coherence properties of single photons emitted from a semiconductor cavity QED (quantum electrodynamics) system, i.e., a quantum dot embedded in an optical cavity. The degree of indistinguishability, governing the quantum mechanical interference between two single photons, is calculated as a function of important parameters describing the cavity QED system and the phonon reservoir, e.g., cavity quality factor, light-matter coupling strength, temperature, and phonon lifetime. We show that non-Markovian effects play an important role in determining the coherence properties for typical parameter values and establish the conditions under which a Markovian approximation may be applied. The calculations are performed using a recently developed second-order perturbation theory, and the limits of validity are established by comparing to an exact diagonalization approach. We find that for large cavity decay rates the perturbation theory may break down.
This thesis is devoted to theoretically study the systems of single quantum dots (QDs) embedded in various photonic nanostructures, in close relation with experimental data. The word single is essential: due to their nanometer size, QDs have mainly been studied as ensembles. It is only recently that the experimental progress, in particular in the domain of QDs growth, has allowed to address single QDs. This helped to observe that the confined states in a QD resemble those of an atom, leading in turn to the macro-atom picture for QDs. It opened the path to the study of cavity quantum electrodynamics (CQED) in the solid state, as the analogous of a system of an atom in an electromagnetic cavity. However, already at the level of the QD (i.e. without a solid state cavity), the macro-atom picture has been proven to be oversimplified. Various effects related to the solid state environment of the QD have been experimentally and theoretically evidenced, like the influence of acoustic and optical phonons. These are channels of decoherence for the otherwise well isolated and confined QD levels. When adding the cavity, these effects are possibly enhanced, which can lead to very large deviations from the CQED ideal picture. Therefore the clear understanding of these effects is of essential importance, especially in view of the application of solid state systems to quantum information science. In Chapter 2, we address the radiation-matter coupling between two QDs in a nanocavity. This field of research combines the high quality of light resonators to the nonlinearities of the semiconductor material. It is promising in view of manipulating and transferring single long-lived excitations, an essential goal for quantum information science. Then, we study the deviations of a QD from the idealized macroatom picture. First, in Chapter 3, we include the influence of acoustic phonons on the light emitted by a QD-cavity system. We show that the QD modified susceptibility leads to the qualitative explanation of the cavity feeding effects, which is one of the most striking deviations of the QD-cavity system from the ideal CQED picture. In addition to phonons are extended two-dimensional states populated by the non resonant pumping laser in the QD's wetting layer (WL). In Chapters 4 and 5 we build a Monte-Carlo model of the excitation-decay mechanism in a QD-cavity system. We use it to describe the influence of WL states on the dynamics of the QD, leading in turn to a non-CQED behavior. This approach is particularly successful in the case of large QD-cavity detuning, where it predicts both time-dependent and spectral characteristics of the emitted light. Finally, in Chapter 6, we discuss our conclusions, emphasizing in particular that the knowledge of the actual solid state environment of the QD leads to a better control over the parameters allowing to reach the CQED regime. We also discuss the possible extensions of this work, in particular in relation to the analysis of the stimulated emission regime.
Electron-phonon coupling in semiconductor quantum dots plays a significant role in determining the optical properties of excited excitons, especially the spectral nature of emitted photons. This paper presents a comprehensive theory and analysis of emission spectra from artificial atoms or quantum dots coupled to structured photon reservoirs and acoustic phonons, when excited with incoherent pump fields. As specific examples of structured reservoirs, we chose a Lorentzian cavity and a slow-light coupled-cavity waveguide, which have both been explored experimentally. For the case of optical cavities, we directly compare and contrast the spectra from three well-known and distinct theoretical approaches to treat electron-phonon coupling, including a Markovian polaron master equation, a non-Markovian phonon correlation expansion technique, and a semiclassical linear susceptibility approach, and we point out the limitations of these models. For the cavity-QED polaron master equation, which treats the cavity-mode operator at the level of a system operator, we give closed form analytical solutions to the phonon-assisted scattering rates in the weak excitation approximation, fully accounting for temperature, cavity-exciton detuning, and cavity-dot coupling. We also show explicitly why the semiclassical linear susceptibility approach fails to correctly account for phonon-mediated cavity feeding. For weakly coupled cavities, we calculate the optical spectra using a more general photon reservoir polaron master-equation approach, and explain its differences from the above approaches in the low-QQQ limit of a Lorentzian cavity. We subsequently use this general reservoir approach to calculate the emission spectra from quantum dots coupled to slow-light photonic crystal waveguides, which demonstrate a number of striking photon-phonon coupling effects.
A solid-state single-photon source emitting indistinguishable photons on-demand is an essential component of linear optics quantum computing schemes. However, the emitter will inevitably interact with the solid-state environment causing decoherence and loss of indistinguishability. In this paper, we present a comprehensive theoretical treatment of the influence of phonon scattering on the coherence properties of single photons emitted from semiconductor quantum dots. We model decoherence using a full microscopic theory and compare with standard Markovian approximations employing Lindblad-type relaxation terms. Significant differences between the two approaches are found.
Semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) in photonic nanocavities provide monolithic, robust platforms for both quantum information processing and cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED). An inherent feature of such solid-state cavity QED systems is the presence of electron-phonon interactions, which distinguishes these systems from conventional atomic cavity QED. Understanding the effects of electron-phonon interactions on these systems is indispensable for controlling and exploiting the rich physics that they exhibit. Here we investigate the effects of electron-phonon interactions on a QD-based cavity QED system. When the QD and the cavity are off-resonance, we observe phonon-assisted cavity mode emission that strongly depends on the temperature and cavity-detuning. When they are on-resonance, we observe an asymmetric vacuum Rabi doublet, the splitting of which narrows with increasing temperature. These experimental observations can be well reproduced using a cavity QED model that includes electron-acoustic-phonon interactions. Our work provides significant insight into the important but hitherto poorly understood mechanism of non-resonant QD-cavity coupling and into the physics of various cavity QED systems utilizing emitters coupled to phonons, such as nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond and colloidal nanocrystals.
For a single semiconductor quantum dot embedded in a microcavity, we theoretically and experimentally investigate phonon-assisted transitions between excitons and the cavity mode. Within the framework of the independent boson model we find that such transitions can be very efficient, even for relatively large exciton-cavity detunings of several millielectron volts. Furthermore, we predict a strong detuning asymmetry for the exciton lifetime that vanishes for elevated lattice temperature. Our findings are corroborated by experiment, which turns out to be in good quantitative and qualitative agreement with theory.