Semiconductor quantum wells excited by non-classical states of light: Interplay between photonic quantum correlations and many-body interactions in solid state systems

由非经典光态激发的半导体量子阱：固态系统中光子量子相关性与多体相互作用之间的相互作用

• 批准号: 405644111
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Torsten Meier
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Arbeitsgruppe Theoretische Festkörper-Optoelektronik und -Photonik
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2018-12-31 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/405644111?language=en
• 关键词: Semiconductor; quantum; wells; excited; non

Compared to atomic systems, the theoretical description of the optical properties of bulk semiconductors and nanostructures is significantly more complex but also much richer and over a wide range designable by the choice of the nanostructure geometry and the material composition, e.g., in quantum wells. Whereas in atoms the electronic states are localized and discrete, the periodic arrangement of atoms in a lattice results in delocalized Bloch states and the continuous electronic band structure of crystals. In addition, in bulk semiconductors and nanostructures like quantum wells many-body interactions among the electrons and with other quasi-particles like phonons very strongly influence their properties. This has several important consequences such as excitonic resonances which dominate the linear optical absorption near the band gap and many-body correlations, e.g., biexcitonic effects and dephasing and relaxation processes resulting from Coulomb scattering and electron-phonon scattering that significantly modify the optical properties.The excitation of semiconductors and semiconductor nanostructures with classical light fields has been studied very intensively for several decades both experimentally and theoretically. However, significantly less knowledge is available on the interaction with quantum light. Most of the existing literature focuses on the emission properties, e.g., the description of spontaneous light emission (luminescence) by the coupling to vacuum field fluctuations and much attention was in particular paid to quantum dots (so-called artificial atoms, with discrete confined electronic states) due to their potential for applications as on-demand sources for single photons and entangled photon pairs. Up to now, only very few studies exist on the excitation of semiconductors with quantum light for which rather simple cases were considered. With this joint proposal we plan to fill this gap and to develop a fully-quantized and microscopic theoretical approach able to accurately describe the resonant and near-resonant interaction of semiconductor quantum wells with complex quantum light, in particular with bright squeezed light. Such non-classical light is characterized by broad photon number distribution, strong correlations between photons, noise reduction below the shot-noise level, and presence of high-order non-zero orbital angular momenta. The interaction of such light with semiconductors will bring new features into the excitation dynamics and allows to transfer strong quantum correlations from the field subsystem to the electronic one and vice versa. The planned investigations will help to discover the novel features of semiconductor structures arising due to photonic correlations and mutual influence of interacting subsystems, give the possibility to control the electronic transport and properties of such systems and lead to predictions of new physical phenomena and their experimentally observable signatures.

与原子系统相比，块体半导体和纳米结构的光学性质的理论描述要复杂得多，但也要丰富得多，范围也更广，可以通过选择纳米结构的几何结构和材料组成来设计，例如在量子阱中。在原子中，电子态是局域的和离散的，而原子在晶格中的周期性排列导致了非定域的Bloch态和晶体的连续电子能带结构。此外，在块状半导体和纳米结构(如量子阱)中，电子之间的多体相互作用以及与其他准粒子(如声子)之间的多体相互作用对它们的性质有非常强烈的影响。这产生了几个重要的结果，如控制带隙附近线性光学吸收的激子共振和多体关联，如双激子效应以及由库仑散射和电子-声子散射引起的显着改变光学性质的退相和弛豫过程。几十年来，人们从实验和理论上对半导体和半导体纳米结构的经典光场激发进行了非常深入的研究。然而，关于与量子光相互作用的知识明显较少。现有的大部分文献都集中在量子点的发射性质上，例如，通过与真空场涨落的耦合来描述自发光发射(发光)，尤其是量子点(所谓的人造原子，具有离散的受限电子态)，因为它们作为单光子和纠缠光子对的按需源具有潜在的应用前景。到目前为止，关于量子光激发半导体的研究很少，只考虑了相当简单的情况。通过这一联合提议，我们计划填补这一空白，并发展一种完全量子化的微观理论方法，能够准确描述半导体量子阱与复量子光，特别是与明亮压缩光的共振和近共振相互作用。这种非经典光的特点是光子数分布宽，光子之间的关联强，噪声降低到散粒噪声水平以下，并且存在高阶非零轨道角动量。这种光与半导体的相互作用将给激发动力学带来新的特征，并允许将强量子关联从场子系统转移到电子子系统，反之亦然。计划中的研究将有助于发现由于光子关联和相互作用的子系统的相互影响而产生的半导体结构的新特征，给出控制这类系统的电子输运和性质的可能性，并导致对新的物理现象及其实验可观察特征的预测。