The energy states in semiconductor quantum dots are discrete as in atoms, and quantum states can be coherently controlled with resonant laser pulses. Long coherence times allow the observation of Rabi-flopping of a single dipole transition in a solid
state device, for which occupancy of the upper state depends sensitively on the dipole moment and the excitation laser power. We report on the robust preparation of a quantum state using an optical technique that exploits rapid adiabatic passage from the ground to an excited state through excitation with laser pulses whose frequency is swept through the resonance. This observation in photoluminescence experiments is made possible by introducing a novel optical detection scheme for the resonant electron hole pair (exciton) generation.
We study photon bunching phenomena associated with biexciton-exciton cascade in single GaAs self-assembled quantum dots. Experiments carried out with a pulsed excitation source show that significant bunching is only detectable at very low excitation,
where the typical intensity of photon streams is less than the half of their saturation value. Our findings are qualitatively understood with a model which accounts for Poissonian statistics in the number of excitons, predicting the height of a bunching peak being determined by the inverse of probability of finding more than one exciton.
