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arXiv:quant-ph/0602085 · Physical Review Letters

Strong Coupling between Single Photons in Semiconductor Microcavities

William T. M. Irvine, Kevin J. Hennessy, Dirk Bouwmeester

Published Feb 7, 2006• 73 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We discuss the observability of strong coupling between single photons in semiconductor microcavities coupled by a chi2 nonlinearity. We present two schemes and analyze the feasibility of their practical implementation in three systems: photonic crystal defects, micropillars, and microdisks, fabricated out of GaAs. We show that, if a weak coherent state is used to enhance the chi2 interaction, the strong coupling regime between two modes at different frequencies occupied by a single photon is within reach of current technology. The unstimulated strong coupling of a single photon and a photon pair is very challenging and will require an improvement in mirocavity quality factors of 2-4 orders of magnitude to be observable.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.96.057405

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We discuss the observability of strong coupling between single photons in semiconductor microcavities coupled by a chi2 nonlinearity. We present two schemes and analyze the feasibility of their practical implementation in three systems: photonic crystal defects, micropillars, and microdisks, fabricated out of GaAs. We show that, if a weak coherent state is used to enhance the chi2 interaction, the strong coupling regime between two modes at different frequencies occupied by a single photon is within reach of current technology. The unstimulated strong coupling of a single photon and a photon pair is very challenging and will require an improvement in mirocavity quality factors of 2-4 orders of magnitude to be observable.
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Light-matter interaction on the level of single emitters and single photons has attracted significant scientific interest in recent years. Of particular interest is strong coupling of single emitters in solid state systems and its application to quantum information processing. Due to the enormous progress in semiconductor technology it has become feasible to demonstrate strong coupling of single quantum dots in high-Q microcavity systems. Although it has been argued in these studies that it is very unlikely that several degenerated quantum dots contributed to the observed Rabi-splitting, it was not verified that the system had one and only one emitter. In this work we present proof that the emission from a strongly-coupled QD- microcavity system is dominated by a single quantum emitter.
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