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 qua
ntum 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 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-assist
ed 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.
