Effect of electromagnetic field statistics on nonlinear optical processes

S. Portolan, Omar Di Stefano, Salvatore Savasta +2 more

We present a systematic theory of Coulomb-induced correlation effects in the nonlinear optical processes within the strong-coupling regime. In this paper, we shall set a dynamics controlled truncation scheme microscopic treatment of nonlinear parametric processes in semiconductor microcavities including the electromagnetic field quantization. It represents the starting point for the microscopic approach to quantum optics experiments in the strong-coupling regime without any assumption on the quantum statistics of electronic excitations (excitons) involved. We exploit a previous technique, which was used in the semiclassical context, which, once applied to four-wave mixing in quantum wells, allowed us to understand a wide range of observed phenomena. We end up with dynamical equations for exciton and photon operators, which extend the usual semiclassical description of Coulomb interaction effects in terms of a mean-field term plus a genuine noninstantaneous four-particle correlation to quantum optical effects.

Sergei A. Akhmanov, A. S. Chirkin

Daniel F. Walls

Alexey A. Gorlach, Ofer Neufeld, Nicholas Rivera +2 more

Effects of extreme nonlinear optics, such as high harmonic generation (HHG), are conventionally modeled with classical electromagnetic fields: both the driving and emitted fields are treated classically. We present the fully quantum electrodynamical theory of extreme nonlinear optics and use it to predict new quantum effects in HHG. The quantum description shows new effects in both the spectral and statistical properties of HHG. We also describe how the HHG process changes in the single-atom regime and discuss experiments that can test our various predictions. Revealing the quantum-optical nature of HHG could lead to novel sources of attosecond light having intrinsically quantum statistics, such as squeezing and entanglement.

Chiaki Ohae, W. Liu, Shiro Kamakura +3 more

We report an experimental demonstration of the conceptual idea of engineering nonlinear optical processes, where optical phases of electromagnetic fields relevant to the nonlinear optical processes are arbitrarily manipulated as a function of interaction length.

Jan Peřina