No Arabic abstract
We present a semi-analytic and asymptotically exact solution to the problem of phonon-induced decoherence in a quantum dot-microcavity system. Particular emphasis is placed on the linear polarization and optical absorption, but the approach presented herein may be straightforwardly adapted to address any elements of the exciton-cavity density matrix. At its core, the approach combines Trotters decomposition theorem with the linked cluster expansion. The effects of the exciton-cavity and exciton-phonon couplings are taken into account on equal footing, thereby providing access to regimes of comparable polaron and polariton timescales. We show that the optical decoherence is realized by real phonon-assisted transitions between different polariton states of the quantum dot-cavity system, and that the polariton line broadening is well-described by Fermis golden rule in the polariton frame. We also provide purely analytic approximations which accurately describe the system dynamics in the limit of longer polariton timescales.
A semiconductor quantum dot (QD) embedded within an optical microcavity is a system of fundamental importance within quantum information processing. The optimization of quantum coherence is crucial in such applications, requiring an in-depth understanding of the relevant decoherence mechanisms. We provide herein a critical review of prevalent theoretical treatments of the QD-cavity system coupled to longitudinal acoustic phonons, comparing predictions against a recently obtained exact solution. Within this review we consider a range of temperatures and exciton-cavity coupling strengths. Predictions of the polaron Nakajima-Zwanzig (NZ) and time-convolutionless (TCL) master equations, as well as a variation of the former adapted for adiabatic continuous wave excitation (CWE), are compared against an asymptotically exact solution based upon Trotters decomposition (TD) theorem. The NZ and TCL implementations, which apply a polaron transformation to the Hamiltonian and subsequently treat the exciton-cavity coupling to second order, do not offer a significant improvement accuracy relative to the polaron transformation alone. The CWE adaptation provides a marked improvement, capturing the broadband features of the absorption spectrum (not present in NZ and TCL implementations). We attribute this difference to the effect of the Markov approximation, and particularly its unsuitability in pulsed excitation regime. Even the CWE adaptation, however, breaks down in the regime of high temperature ($50K$) and strong exciton-cavity coupling ($g gtrsim 0.2$ meV). The TD solution is of comparable computational complexity to the above-mentioned master equation approaches, yet remains accurate at higher temperatures and across a broad range of exciton-cavity coupling strengths (at least up to $g=1.5$ meV).
We investigate the influence of the electron-phonon interaction on the decay dynamics of a quantum dot coupled to an optical microcavity. We show that the electron-phonon interaction has important consequences on the dynamics, especially when the quantum dot and cavity are tuned out of resonance, in which case the phonons may add or remove energy leading to an effective non-resonant coupling between quantum dot and cavity. The system is investigated using two different theoretical approaches: (i) a second-order expansion in the bare phonon coupling constant, and (ii) an expansion in a polaron-photon coupling constant, arising from the polaron transformation which allows an accurate description at high temperatures. In the low temperature regime we find excellent agreement between the two approaches. An extensive study of the quantum dot decay dynamics is performed, where important parameter dependencies are covered. We find that in general the electron-phonon interaction gives rise to a greatly increased bandwidth of the coupling between quantum dot and cavity. At low temperature an asymmetry in the quantum dot decay rate is observed, leading to a faster decay when the quantum dot has a larger energy than to the cavity. We explain this as due to the absence of phonon absorption processes. Furthermore, we derive approximate analytical expressions for the quantum dot decay rate, applicable when the cavity can be adiabatically eliminated. The expressions lead to a clear interpretation of the physics and emphasizes the important role played by the effective phonon density, describing the availability of phonons for scattering, in quantum dot decay dynamics. Based on the analytical expressions we present the parameter regimes where phonon effects are expected to be important. Also, we include all technical developments in appendices.
We report on simulations of the degree of polarization entanglement of photon pairs simultaneously emitted from a quantum dot-cavity system that demand revisiting the role of phonons. Since coherence is a fundamental precondition for entanglement and phonons are known to be a major source of decoherence, it seems unavoidable that phonons can only degrade entanglement. In contrast, we demonstrate that phonons can cause a degree of entanglement that even surpasses the corresponding value for the phonon-free case. In particular, we consider the situation of comparatively small biexciton binding energies and either finite exciton or cavity mode splitting. In both cases, combinations of the splitting and the dot-cavity coupling strength are found where the entanglement exhibits a nonmonotonic temperature dependence which enables entanglement above the phonon-free level in a finite parameter range. This unusual behavior can be explained by phonon-induced renormalizations of the dot-cavity coupling $g$ in combination with a nonmonotonic dependence of the entanglement on $g$ that is present already without phonons.
We investigate the influence of electron-phonon interactions on the dynamical properties of a quantum-dot-cavity QED system. We show that non-Markovian effects in the phonon reservoir lead to strong changes in the dynamics, arising from photon-assisted dephasing processes, not present in Markovian treatments. A pronounced consequence is the emergence of a phonon induced spectral asymmetry when detuning the cavity from the quantum-dot resonance. The asymmetry can only be explained when considering the polaritonic quasi-particle nature of the quantum-dot-cavity system. Furthermore, a temperature induced reduction of the light-matter coupling strength is found to be relevant in interpreting experimental data, especially in the strong coupling regime.
The proximity effect (PE) between superconductor and confined electrons can induce the effective pairing phenomena of electrons in nanowire or quantum dot (QD). Through interpreting the PE as an exchange of virtually quasi-excitation in a largely gapped superconductor, we found that there exists another induced dynamic process. Unlike the effective pairing that mixes the QD electron states coherently, this extra process leads to dephasing of the QD. In a case study, the dephasing time is inversely proportional to the Coulomb interaction strength between two electrons in the QD. Further theoretical investigations imply that this dephasing effect can decrease the quality of the zero temperature mesoscopic electron transportation measurements by lowering and broadening the corresponding differential conductance peaks.