99 research outputs found
Optical bistability in a GaAs based polariton diode
We report on a new type of optical nonlinearity in a polariton p-i-n
microcavity. Abrupt switching between the strong and weak coupling regime is
induced by controlling the electric field within the cavity. As a consequence
bistable cycles are observed for low optical powers (2-3 orders of magnitude
less than for Kerr induced bistability). Signatures of switching fronts
propagating through the whole 300 microns x 300 microns mesa surface are
evidenced.Comment: 5 pages 3 figure
Full coherent control of nuclear spins in an optically pumped single quantum dot
Highly polarized nuclear spins within a semiconductor quantum dot (QD) induce
effective magnetic (Overhauser) fields of up to several Tesla acting on the
electron spin or up to a few hundred mT for the hole spin. Recently this has
been recognized as a resource for intrinsic control of QD-based spin quantum
bits. However, only static long-lived Overhauser fields could be used. Here we
demonstrate fast redirection on the microsecond time-scale of Overhauser fields
of the order of 0.5 T experienced by a single electron spin in an optically
pumped GaAs quantum dot. This has been achieved using full coherent control of
an ensemble of 10^3-10^4 optically polarized nuclear spins by sequences of
short radio-frequency (rf) pulses. These results open the way to a new class of
experiments using rf techniques to achieve highly-correlated nuclear spins in
quantum dots, such as adiabatic demagnetization in the rotating frame leading
to sub-micro K nuclear spin temperatures, rapid adiabatic passage, and spin
squeezing
Polariton condensation and lasing in optical microcavities - the decoherence driven crossover
We explore the behaviour of a system which consists of a photon mode dipole
coupled to a medium of two-level oscillators in a microcavity in the presence
of decoherence. We consider two types of decoherence processes which are
analogous to magnetic and non-magnetic impurities in superconductors. We study
different phases of this system as the decoherence strength and the excitation
density is changed. For a low decoherence we obtain a polariton condensate with
comparable excitonic and photonic parts at low densities and a BCS-like state
with bigger photon component due to the fermionic phase space filling effect at
high densities. In both cases there is a large gap in the density of states. As
the decoherence is increased the gap is broadened and suppressed, resulting in
a gapless condensate and finally a suppression of the coherence in a low
density regime and a laser at high density limit. A crossover between these
regimes is studied in a self-consistent way analogous to the Abrikosov and
Gor'kov theory of gapless superconductivity.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, submitted to PR
Continuous wave observation of massive polariton redistribution by stimulated scattering in semiconductor microcavities
A massive redistribution of the polariton occupancy to two specific wave vectors is observed under conditions of continuous wave excitation of a semiconductor microcavity.
The “condensation” of the polaritons to the two specific states arises from stimulated scattering at final
state occupancies of order unity. The stimulation phenomena, arising due to the bosonic character of
the polariton quasiparticles, occur for conditions of resonant excitation of the lower polariton branch.
High energy nonresonant excitation, as in most previous work, instead leads to conventional lasing in
the vertical cavity structure
Quantifying n -Photon Indistinguishability with a Cyclic Integrated Interferometer
We report on a universal method to measure the genuine indistinguishability of n photons - a crucial parameter that determines the accuracy of optical quantum computing. Our approach relies on a low-depth cyclic multiport interferometer with N=2n modes, leading to a quantum interference fringe whose visibility is a direct measurement of the genuine n-photon indistinguishability. We experimentally demonstrate this technique for an eight-mode integrated interferometer fabricated using femtosecond laser micromachining and four photons from a quantum dot single-photon source. We measure a four-photon indistinguishability up to 0.81±0.03. This value decreases as we intentionally alter the photon pairwise indistinguishability. The low-depth and low-loss multiport interferometer design provides an original path to evaluate the genuine indistinguishability of resource states of increasing photon number
Collective coherence in planar semiconductor microcavities
Semiconductor microcavities, in which strong coupling of excitons to confined
photon modes leads to the formation of exciton-polariton modes, have
increasingly become a focus for the study of spontaneous coherence, lasing, and
condensation in solid state systems. This review discusses the significant
experimental progress to date, the phenomena associated with coherence which
have been observed, and also discusses in some detail the different theoretical
models that have been used to study such systems. We consider both the case of
non-resonant pumping, in which coherence may spontaneously arise, and the
related topics of resonant pumping, and the optical parametric oscillator.Comment: 46 pages, 12 figure
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