Scheme for generation of sub-Poissonian photons: Antibunching of emission events by population-dependent spontaneous-emission lifetime in semiconductor microcavities

An alternative scheme for the generation of sub-Poissonian photons based on population-dependent spontaneous-emission lifetime in semiconductor microcavities is proposed and discussed theoretically. In the proposed scheme, the lifetime decreasing with electron population antibunches the emission events and, as a result, expands remarkably the frequency range for the suppression of spontaneous photon number fluctuation noise far beyond the inverse of the lifetime. The negative derivative of the lifetime is caused by a resultant effect of field screening due to populated electron-hole pairs and of quantum-confined Stark effect in biased quantum wells embedded in the microcavities. The proposed scheme may open up a new opportunity in extremely low-power (several photons) high-speed photonics.