No Arabic abstract
We report on the development of on-chip microcavities and show their potential as a platform for cavity quantum electrodynamics experiments. Microcavity arrays were formed by the controlled buckling of SiO2/Ta2O5 Bragg mirrors, and exhibit a reflectance-limited finesse of 3500 and mode volumes as small as 35lambda^3. We show that the cavity resonance can be thermally tuned into alignment with the D2 transition of 87Rb, and outline two methods for providing atom access to the cavity. Owing to their small mode volume and high finesse, these cavities exhibit single-atom cooperativities as high as C1 = 65. A unique feature of the buckled-dome architecture is that the strong-coupling parameter g0/kappa is nearly independent of the cavity size. Furthermore, strong coupling should be achievable with only modest improvements in mirror reflectance, suggesting that these monolithic devices could provide a robust and scalable solution to the engineering of light-matter interfaces.
Many of the envisioned quantum photonic technologies, e.g. a quantum repeater, rely on an energy- (wavelength-) tunable source of polarization entangled photon pairs. The energy tunability is a fundamental requirement to perform two-photon-interference between different sources and to swap the entanglement. Parametric-down-conversion and four-wave-mixing sources of entangled photons have shown energy tunability, however the probabilistic nature of the sources limits their applications in complex quantum protocols. Here we report a silicon-based hybrid photonic chip where energy-tunable polarization entangled photons are generated by deterministic and scalable III-V quantum light sources. This device is based on a micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) incorporating InAs/GaAs quantum dots (QDs) on a PMNPT-on-silicon substrate. The entangled photon emissions from single QDs can be tuned by more than 3000 times of the radiative linewidth without spoiling the entanglement. With a footprint of several hundred microns, our design facilitates the miniaturization and scalable integration of indistinguishable entangled photon sources on silicon. When interfaced with silicon-based quantum photonic circuits, this device will offer a vast range of exciting possibilities.
Optical cavities are of central importance in numerous areas of physics, including precision measurement, cavity optomechanics and cavity quantum electrodynamics. The miniaturisation and scaling to large numbers of sites is of interest for many of these applications, in particular for quantum computation and simulation. Here we present the first scaled microcavity system which enables the creation of large numbers of highly uniform, tunable light-matter interfaces using ions, neutral atoms or solid-state qubits. The microcavities are created by means of silicon micro-fabrication, are coupled directly to optical fibres and can be independently tuned to the chosen frequency, paving the way for arbitrarily large networks of optical microcavities.
We report on the thermomechanical and thermal tuning properties of curved-mirror Fabry-Perot resonators, fabricated by the guided assembly of circular delamination buckles within a multilayer a-Si/SiO2 stack. Analytical models for temperature dependence, effective spring constants, and mechanical mode frequencies are described and shown to be in good agreement with experimental results. The cavities exhibit mode volumes as small as $sim10lambda^3$, reflectance-limited finesse $sim3times10^3$, and mechanical resonance frequencies in the MHz range. Monolithic cavity arrays of this type might be of interest for applications in sensing, cavity quantum electrodynamics, and optomechanics.
We have developed and characterised a stable, narrow linewidth external-cavity laser (ECL) tunable over 100 nm around 1080 nm, using a single-angled-facet gain chip. We propose the ECL as a low-cost, high-performance alternative to fibre and diode lasers in this wavelength range and demonstrate its capability through the spectroscopy of metastable helium. Within the coarse tuning range, the wavelength can be continuously tuned over 30 pm (7.8 GHz) without mode-hopping and modulated with bandwidths up to 3 kHz (piezo) and 37(3) kHz (current). The spectral linewidth of the free-running ECL was measured to be 22(2) kHz (Gaussian) and 4.2(3) kHz (Lorentzian) over 22.5 ms, while a long-term frequency stability better than 40(20) kHz over 11 hours was observed when locked to an atomic reference.
We present a method to implement 3-dimensional polariton confinement with in-situ spectral tuning of the cavity mode. Our tunable microcavity is a hybrid system consisting of a bottom semiconductor distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) with a cavity containing quantum wells (QWs) grown on top and a dielectric concave DBR separated by a micrometer sized gap. Nanopositioners allow independent positioning of the two mirrors and the cavity mode energy can be tuned by controlling the distance between them. When close to resonance we observe a characteristic anticrossing between the cavity modes and the QW exciton demonstrating strong coupling. For the smallest radii of curvature concave mirrors of 5.6 $mu$m and 7.5 $mu$m real-space polariton imaging reveals submicron polariton confinement due to the hemispherical cavity geometry.