Nonclassical light from finite-range interactions in a two-dimensional quantum mirror

Valentin Walther, Lida Zhang, Susanne F. Yelin, and Thomas Pohl
Phys. Rev. B 105, 075307 – Published 15 February 2022

Abstract

Excitons in a semiconductor monolayer form a collective resonance that can reflect resonant light with extraordinarily high efficiency. Here, we investigate the nonlinear optical properties of such atomistically thin mirrors and show that finite-range interactions between excitons can lead to the generation of highly nonclassical light. We describe two scenarios, in which optical nonlinearities arise either from direct photon coupling to excitons in excited Rydberg states or from resonant two-photon excitation of Rydberg excitons with finite-range interactions. The latter case yields conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency and thereby provides an efficient mechanism for single-photon switching between high transmission and reflectance of the monolayer, with a tunable dynamical timescale of the emerging photon-photon interactions. Remarkably, it turns out that the resulting high degree of photon correlations remains virtually unaffected by Rydberg-state decoherence, in excess of nonradiative decoherence observed for ground-state excitons in two-dimensional semiconductors. This robustness to imperfections suggests a promising approach to quantum photonics at the level of individual photons.

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  • Received 20 February 2021
  • Revised 1 February 2022
  • Accepted 2 February 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.105.075307

©2022 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsAtomic, Molecular & Optical

Authors & Affiliations

Valentin Walther1,2,3,*, Lida Zhang3, Susanne F. Yelin2, and Thomas Pohl3

  • 1ITAMP, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
  • 2Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
  • 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 120, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark

  • *valentin.walther@cfa.harvard.edu

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Issue

Vol. 105, Iss. 7 — 15 February 2022

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