Significant prolongation of the coherence time by means of photon echo has been observed in a room temperature quantum dot amplifier operating at telecom wavelength. A record-long room temperature pure dephasing time of 4.7 ps was demonstrated using a detection technique suitable for practical applications.
The use of ultrashort pulses allows to induce and observe quantum coherent effects in optical gain media where the coherence time is longer than the excitation pulses namely, room temperature quantum dot ensembles. We use InAs/InP quantum dot optical amplifiers as the experimental platform and have demonstrated effects such as coherently controlled Rabi Oscillations, Ramsey Fringes, Photon`Echoes, Prolongation of dephasing time via induced three pulse photon echoes. Recently we have advanced the field by demonstrating a hallmark experiment of quantum optics: Quantum Coherent collapse and revival which was never observed in a solid let alone at room temperature.
We demonstrate the hallmark concept of periodic collapse and revival of coherence in a room-temperature ensemble of quantum dots (QDs) in the form of a 1.5-mm-long optical amplifier. Femtosecond excitation pulses induce coherent interactions with a number of discrete homogeneous QD subgroups within an inhomogeneously broadened ensemble, which interfere constructively to induce coherent revival (CR). The amplitude decay of CR is dictated by the QD homogeneous linewidth, thus enabling its extraction in a double-pulse Ramsey-type experiment. The more common photon echo technique is also invoked and yields the same linewidth provided that both experiments use the same bias. A dephasing time T2 longer than 5 ps is extracted. This is a record long T2 for a room-temperature QD ensemble and testifies to the high quality of the InAs/InP QDs used in the experiments. Measured electrical bias and temperature dependencies of the transverse relaxation times (T2 and T2∗) enable the determination of the two main decoherence mechanisms: carrier-carrier and carrier-phonon scatterings.
We report measurements of ultralong coherence in self-assembled quantum dots. Transient four-wave mixing experiments at 5 K show an average dephasing time of 372 ps, corresponding to a homogeneous linewidth of 3.5 microeV, which is significantly smaller than the linewidth observed in single-dot luminescence. Time-resolved luminescence measurements show a lifetime of the dot ground state of 800 ps, demonstrating the presence of pure dephasing at finite temperature. The homogeneous width is lifetime limited only at temperatures approaching 0 K.
Coherence in light–matter interaction is a necessary ingredient if light is used to control the quantum state of a material system. Coherent effects are firmly associated with isolated systems kept at low temperature. The exceedingly fast dephasing in condensed matter environments, in particular at elevated temperatures, may well erase all coherent information in the material at timescales shorter than a laser excitation pulse. Here we show for an ensemble of semiconductor quantum dots that even in the presence of ultrafast dephasing, for suitably designed condensed matter systems quantum-coherent effects are robust enough to be observable at room temperature. Our conclusions are based on an analysis of the reshaping an ultrafast laser pulse undergoes on propagation through a semiconductor quantum dot amplifier. We show that this pulse modification contains the signature of coherent light–matter interaction and can be controlled by adjusting the population of the quantum dots via electrical injection. Quantum coherence effects are often only visible at low temperatures, where dephasing times are not too short. Here Kolarczik et al. show that quantum coherence effects can appear in the reshaping of ultrafast laser pulses passing through quantum dots even at room temperature.
Experimental results of observations of a femtosecond photon echo excited in an ensemble of quantum nanometer-sized objects in thin semiconductor (ZnO, SiB, SiP) films at room temperature are presented. The observed properties of the photon echo are discussed. Recorded relaxation times of exciton quantum transitions and beats at the photon echo decay as a function of the increasing interval between the exciting pulses reveal the role played by the defects of the thin film in the formation of its exciton structure of quantum transitions investigated using angular optical echo spectroscopy.
Storage and manipulation of quantum information requires (nearly) perfect timing---or precisely timed pulse sequences, anyhow. In quantum memory based on photon echoes, for example, the appearance time of the echo must be determined with great accuracy. This study shows how to control photon echoes in a quantum-dot optical amplifier operating at room temperature. As the amplifier is a distributed device, propagation effects are dominant in the generation of the echo pulse, and shaping the excitation pulse serves to control the echo's appearance time and strength.