Antibunching of Thermal Radiation by a Room-Temperature Phonon Bath: A Numerically Solvable Model for a Strongly Interacting Light-Matter-Reservoir System

Progress in semiconductor technology introduces a new platform for quantum optics studies in solid state: a quantum dot strongly coupled to a cavity mode. We present a numerically solvable model for the combined electron, photon, and phonon dynamics. For a cavity mode prepared in a Fock state, the model reproduces the Jaynes-Cumming solution and interaction with a phonon bath leads to a higher value for the intensity-intensity correlation function: $g^{(2)}(0)$. In contrast, for an initial thermal photon distribution, the phonon-bath interaction gives a counterintuitive reduction in $g^{(2)}(0)$, resulting in the classical photon distribution evolving into a nonclassical one.

Figure 1

QD CQED problem. The quantities are defined in the discussion surrounding Eq. (1), and calculations were performed assuming an InAs quantum dot in bulk GaAs: $\hslash {\omega }_{cv}=1.0\mathrm{eV}$, $\hslash {\omega }_{\mathrm{LO}}=36\mathrm{meV}$, and $\hslash M=80\mu \mathrm{eV}$.

Figure 2

Flow of photon- and phonon-assisted expectation values in the numerically solvable QD CQED approach.

Figure 3

Left column is for initial Fock state and right column is for initial thermal state. Panels (a),(d) plot the photon population versus time for $T_{\mathrm{LO}}=3\mathrm{K}$ and 300 K (dotted and solid traces, respectively). Panels (b),(e) are the intensity spectra for $T_{\mathrm{LO}}=3\mathrm{K}$. Panels (c),(f) are the intensity spectra for $T_{\mathrm{LO}}=300\mathrm{K}$.

Figure 4

Left column is for initial Fock state and right column is for initial thermal state. Panels (a),(b) plot the photon correlation versus time for $T_{\mathrm{LO}}=3\mathrm{K}$ and 300 K (dotted and solid traces, respectively). Panels (c),(d) show the count number for a given $g^{(2)}(0)$ for $T_{\mathrm{LO}}=3\mathrm{K}$. Panels (e),(f) show the results for $T_{\mathrm{LO}}=300\mathrm{K}$. The counts are accumulated over a time span of 2 ns, and the arrows indicate the average values. The same parameter values are chosen as in Fig. 3.