Resonance Fluorescence and Squeezing in Semiconductors

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Mackillo Kira
• Subject Area: Experimental Condensed Matter Physics
• Term: from 2005 to 2010
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5469731

When transitions of matter are excited with a resonant optical field, the incoherent reradiation of the excitation is commonly referred to as resonance fluorescence. For this reradiation, several fundamental quantum-optical effects have been predicted and observed in atomic systems. It is well established that phenomena like photon anti bunching, Mollow trielet, and squeezing in atomic resonance fluorescence have steered and inspired quantum-optics research in simple systems. Consequently, resonance fluorescence should be a central topic also for semiconductor quantum optics; therefore, the objective of this project is to investigate resonance fluorescence in semiconductor nanostructures. The emphasis will be in developing new theoretical approaches suitable for semiconductor investigations. Especially, the techniques used in atomic quantum optics can mostly be applied to describe dilute and only weakly interacting systems since relatively simple models of few-level systems are used to describe the material. However, since the elementary excitations, i.e., electrons, experience a strong Coulomb interaction, atom-like simplifications of the material excitations are not possible in a semiconductor system. In order to fully include the light quantization and many-body interaction effects at the same fundamental level, we apply the so-called cluster expansion to consistently treat both the quantum-optical and the Coulomb correlations. As a concrete goal, we want to investigate: · spectral changes with respect to ordinary photoluminescence and the possibilities to obtain squeezing in semiconductor resonance fluorescence, · the relevant connections between squeezing, photon-electron, and Coulombic correlations, · how connected experiments can be explained. This theoretical work is an extension of Project 3 ( Microscopic Theory of Quantum Optical Effects in Semiconductor Nanostructures ) by Koch since higher order photonic correlations have to be treated and it will be be performed in close collaboration with the experimental Project 6 ( Quantum Correlations in the Light Emission from Semiconductors by Prof. Dr. Heinrich Stolz).

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 485: Quantum Optics in Semiconductor Nanostructures