By using the normal ordering method, we study the state evolution of an optically driven excitons in a quantum well immersed in a leaky cavity, which was introduced by Yu-xi Liu et.al. [Phys. Rev. A {\bf 63}, 033816 (2001)]. The influence of the external laser field on the quantum decoherence of a mesoscopically superposed states of the excitons is investigated. Our result shows that, thought the characteristic time of decoherence does not depend on the external field, the phase of the decoherence factor can be well controlled by adjusting the external parameters.
For the excitons in the quantum well placed within a leaky cavity, the quantum decoherence of a mesoscopically superposed states is investigated based on the factorization theory for quantum dissipation. It is found that the coherence of the exciton superposition states will decrease in an oscillating form when the cavity field interacting with the exciton is of the form of quasimode. The effect of the thermal cavity fields on the quantum decoherence of the superposition states of the exciton is studied and it is observed that the higher the temperature of the environment is, the shorter the d…
The size-dependent decoherence of the exciton states resulting from the spontaneous emission is investigated in a semiconductor spherical microcrystallite under condition $a_{B}\ll R_{0}\leqλ$. In general, the larger size of the microcrystallite corresponds to the shorter coherence time. If the initial state is a superposition of two different excitonic coherent states, the coherence time depends on both the overlap of two excitonic coherent states and the size of the microcrystallite. When the system with fixed size is initially in the even or odd coherent states, the larger average number of…
We present a theoretical study showing that an optically driven excitonic two-level system in a solid state environment acts as a heat pump by means of repeated phonon emission or absorption events. We derive a master equation for the combined phonon bath and two-level system dynamics and analyze the direction and rate of energy transfer as a function of the externally accessible driving parameters. We discover that if the driving laser is detuned from the exciton transition, cooling the phonon environment becomes possible.
We report on exciton-acoustic-phonon coupling effects on the generation of exciton maximally entangled states in N=2 and 3 quantum dot systems. In particular, we address the question of the combined effect of laser pulses, appropriate for generating Bell and Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger entangled states, together with decoherence mechanisms as provided by a phonon reservoir. By solving numerically the master equation for the optically driven exciton-phonon kinetics, we show that the generation of maximally entangled exciton states is preserved over a reasonable parameter window.
Energy dissipation and decoherence are at first glance harmful to acquiring long exciton lifetime desired for efficient photovoltaics. In the presence of both optically forbidden (namely, dark) and allowed (bright) excitons, however, they can be instrumental as suggested in photosynthesis. By simulating quantum dynamics of exciton relaxations, we show that the optimized decoherence that imposes a quantum-to-classical crossover with the dissipation realizes a dramatically longer lifetime. In an example of carbon nanotube, the exciton lifetime increases by nearly two orders of magnitude when the…
We report experimental evidence identifying acoustic phonons as the principal source of the excitation-induced-dephasing (EID) responsible for the intensity damping of quantum dot excitonic Rabi rotations. The rate of EID is extracted from temperature dependent Rabi rotation measurements of the ground-state excitonic transition, and is found to be in close quantitative agreement with an acoustic-phonon model.
This paper investigates the dynamics of excitonic transport in photocomplex LHCII, the primary component of the photosynthetic apparatus in green plants. The dynamics exhibits a strong interplay between coherent processes mediated by the excitonic Hamiltonian, and incoherent processes due to interactions with the environment. The spreading of the exciton over a single monomer is well described by a proper measure of delocalization that allows one to identify two relevant time scales. An exciton initially localized in one chromophore first spreads coherently to neighboring chromophores. During …
We show how optically-driven coupled quantum dots can be used to prepare maximally entangled Bell and Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states. Manipulation of the strength and duration of the selective light-pulses needed for producing these highly entangled states provides us with crucial elements for the processing of solid-state based quantum information. Theoretical predictions suggest that several hundred single quantum bit rotations and Controlled-Not gates could be performed before decoherence of the excitonic states takes place.
We demonstrate control over the spin state of a semiconductor quantum dot exciton using a polarized picosecond laser pulse slightly detuned from a biexciton resonance. The control pulse follows an earlier pulse, which generates an exciton and initializes its spin state as a coherent superposition of its two non-degenerate eigenstates. The control pulse preferentially couples one component of the exciton state to the biexciton state, thereby rotating the exciton's spin direction. We detect the rotation by measuring the polarization of the exciton spectral line as a function of the time-differen…
We present a reaction/diffusion model for the formation of a lower polariton condensate in a micro cavity containing an organic semiconducting molecular crystalline film. Our model--based upon an anthracene film sandwiched between two reflecting dielectric mirrors--consists of three coupled fields corresponding to a gas of excitons created by an external driving pulse, a reservoir of vibron states formed by the coupling between a ground-state vibrational model and a cavity photon, and a lower polariton condensate. We show that at finite temperature, the presence of the vibron reservoir can aug…
Neutral silicon vacancy (SiV0) centers in diamond are promising candidates for quantum networks because of their excellent optical properties and long spin coherence times. However, spin-dependent fluorescence in such defects has been elusive due to poor understanding of the excited state fine structure and limited off-resonant spin polarization. Here we report the realization of optically detected magnetic resonance and coherent control of SiV0 centers at cryogenic temperatures, enabled by efficient optical spin polarization via previously unreported higher-lying excited states. We assign the…
Excitonic transitions offer a possible route to ultrafast optical spin manipulation in coupled nanostructures. We perform here a detailed study of the three principal exciton-mediated decoherence channels for optically-controlled electron spin qubits in coupled quantum dots: radiative decay of the excitonic state, exciton-phonon interactions, and Landau-Zener transitions between laser-dressed states. We consider a scheme to produce an entangling controlled-phase gate on a pair of coupled spins which, in its simplest dynamic form, renders the system subject to fast decoherence rates associated …
We provide a self-contained review of master equation approaches to modelling phonon effects in optically driven self-assembled quantum dots. Coupling of the (quasi) two-level excitonic system to phonons leads to dissipation and dephasing, the rates of which depend on the excitation conditions, intrinsic properties of the QD sample, and its temperature. We describe several techniques, which include weak-coupling master equations that are perturbative in the exciton-phonon coupling, as well as those based on the polaron transformation that can remain valid for strong phonon interactions. We add…
We present a detailed analysis and design of a neutral atom quantum logic device based on atoms in optical traps interacting via dipole-dipole coupling of Rydberg states. The dominant physical mechanisms leading to decoherence and loss of fidelity are enumerated. Our results support the feasibility of performing single and two-qubit gates at MHz rates with decoherence probability and fidelity errors at the level of $10^{-3}$ for each operation. Current limitations and possible approaches to further improvement of the device are discussed.
A tapered optical nanofiber simultaneously used to trap and optically interface of cold atoms through evanescent fields constitutes a new and well controllable hybrid quantum system. The atoms are trapped in two parallel 1D optical lattices generated by suitable far blue and red detuned evanescent field modes very close to opposite sides of the nanofiber surface. Collective electronic excitations (excitons) of each of the optical lattices are resonantly coupled to the second lattice forming symmetric and antisymmetric common excitons. In contrast to the inverse cube dependence of the individua…
Single-photon sources play a key role in photonic quantum technologies. Semiconductor quantum dots can emit indistinguishable single photons under resonant excitation. However, the resonance fluorescence technique typically requires cross-polarization filtering which causes a loss of the unpolarized quantum dot emission by 50%. To solve this problem, we demonstrate a method to generate indistinguishable single photons with optically controlled polarization by two laser pulses off-resonant with neutral exciton states. This scheme is realized by exciting the quantum dot to the biexciton state an…
We use the Bloch-Redfield-Wangsness theory to calculate the effects of acoustic phonons in coherent control experiments, where quantum-dot excitons are driven by shaped laser pulses. This theory yields a generalized Lindblad equation for the density operator of the dot, with time-dependent damping and decoherence due to phonon transitions between the instantaneous dressed states. It captures similar physics to the form recently applied to Rabi oscillation experiments [A. J. Ramsay et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 017402 (2010)], but guarantees positivity of the density operator. At sufficiently l…
We present a scheme to generate arbitrary superposition of the Dicke states of excitons in optically driven quantum dots. This proposal is based on a sequence of laser pulses, which are tuned appropriately to control transitions on Dicke state. It is shown that N laser pulses are needed to generate arbitrary superposition of the Dicke states of N quantum dots.
The possibility of storage of quantum information with photons is studied in the case of resonant transitions via many close lying exciton levels in a solid with impurity Lambda-atoms. The upper levels of the impurity atom form resonant Fano states, similar to the autoionization atomic states, due to the configuration interaction with the continuum of the exciton band. In this case slowing of light pulses is shown to be realistic, in the presence of the control field, down to the group velocity much lower than that in vacuum. The possibility of storage and reconstruction of a quantum pulse is …
We present a novel, counter-intuitive method, based on dark state protection, for significantly improving exciton transport efficiency through `wires' comprising a chain of molecular sites with an intrinsic energy gradient. Specifically, by introducing `barriers' to the energy landscape at regular intervals along the transport path, we find that undesirable radiative recombination processes are suppressed due to a clear separation of sub-radiant and super-radiant eigenstates in the system. This, in turn, can lead to an improvement in transmitted power by many orders of magnitude, even for very…
Excitons bound to flourine atoms in ZnSe have the potential for several quantum optical applications. Examples include optically accessible quantum memories for quantum information processing and lasing without inversion. These applications require the bound-exciton transitions to be coupled to cavities with high cooperativity factors, which results in the experimental observation of low-threshold lasing. We report such lasing from fluorine-doped ZnSe quantum wells in 3 and 6 micron microdisk cavities. Photoluminescence and selective photoluminescence spectroscopy confirm that the lasing is du…
We demonstrate that an optically driven spin of a carrier in a quantum dot undergoes indirect dephasing via conditional optically induced charge evolution even in the absence of any direct interaction between the spin and its environment. A generic model for the indirect dephasing with a three-component system with spin, charge, and reservoir is proposed. This indirect decoherence channel is studied for the optical spin manipulation in a quantum dot with a microscopic description of the charge-phonon interaction taking into account its non-Markovian nature.
Optically-driven Rabi oscillations of single electron spins in a diamond nitrogen vacancy center are realized with two Raman-resonant optical pulses that are detuned from the respective dipole optical transitions. The Rabi oscillations are nuclear-spin selective and are robust against rapid decoherence of the underlying optical transitions, opening the door to generating phonon-mediated spin entanglement in an optically-driven spin-phonon system. A direct comparison between the Rabi oscillations and simulated Raman adiabatic passage along with a detailed theoretical analysis provide a wealth o…
The efficient single photon emission capabilities of quantum dot molecules position them as promising platforms for quantum information processing. Furthermore, quantum dot molecules feature a "decoherence-free" subspace that enables spin qubits with long coherence time. To efficiently read out the spin state within this subspace requires optically cycling isolated transitions that originate from a triplet manifold within the quantum dot molecule. We propose and theoretically study a two-stage spin readout protocol within this decoherence-free subspace that allows single-shot readout performan…
We propose a general approach of protecting a two-level system against decoherence via quantum engineering of non-classical multiple superpositions of coherent states in a non-Markovian reservoir. The scheme surprisingly only uses the system-environment interaction responsible for the decoherence and projective measurements of the two-level system. We demonstrate the method on the example of an excitonic qubit in self-assembled semiconductor quantum dots coupled to super-Ohmic reservoir of acoustic phonons.
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 non-classical 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 conditio…
We study optically driven Rabi rotations of a quantum dot exciton transition between 5 and 50 K, and for pulse-areas of up to $14π$. In a high driving field regime, the decay of the Rabi rotations is nonmonotonic, and the period decreases with pulse-area and increases with temperature. By comparing the experiments to a weak-coupling model of the exciton-phonon interaction, we demonstrate that the observed renormalization of the Rabi frequency is induced by fluctuations in the bath of longitudinal acoustic phonons, an effect that is a phonon analogy of the Lamb-shift.
We study the dark exciton's behavior as a coherent physical two-level spin system (qubit) using an external magnetic field in the Faraday configuration. Our studies are based on polarization-sensitive intensity autocorrelation measurements of the optical transition resulting from the recombination of a spin-blockaded biexciton state, which heralds the dark exciton and its spin state. We demonstrate control over the dark exciton eigenstates without degrading its decoherence time. Our observations agree well with computational predictions based on a master equation model.
We study theoretically the photon statistics of the field emitted from two optically coupled semiconductor microcavities each containing a quantum well. The emission is determined by the interplay between exciton-photon coupling in each quantum well and internal interaction between the two optically coupled microcavities. A high degree of coherent control and tunability via the quantum well-cavity coupling strength and photon tunneling over the photon statistics of the transmitted field can be achieved. We demonstrate that the optical property of radiation emitted by one quantum well can be co…
Semiconductor quantum dots are considered to be the leading venue for fabricating on-demand sources of single photons. However, the generation of long-lived dark excitons imposes significant limits on the efficiency of these sources. We demonstrate a technique that optically pumps the dark exciton population and converts it to a bright exciton population, using intermediate excited biexciton states. We show experimentally that our method considerably reduces the DE population while doubling the triggered bright exciton emission, approaching thereby near-unit fidelity of quantum dot depletion.
This work presents a step furthering a new perspective of proactive control of the spin-exciton dynamics in the quantum limit. Laser manipulation of spin-polarized optical excitations in a semiconductor nanodot is used to control the spin dynamics of two interacting excitons. Shaping of femtosecond laser pulses keeps the quantum operation within the decoherence time. Computation of the fidelity of the operations and application to the complete solution of a basic quantum computing algorithm demonstrate in theory the feasibility of quantum control.
We propose a robust deterministic scheme to generate entanglement at high fidelity without the need of photodetectors even for quantum bits, qubits, with extremely poor optically active states. Our protocol employs stimulated Raman adiabatic passage for population transfer without actually exciting the system. Furthermore, it is found to be effective even if the environmental decoherence rate is of the same order of magnitude as the atom--photon coupling frequency. Our scheme holds potential to solve entanglement generation problems, e.g., in distributed quantum computing.
We show that excitons in coupled quantum dots are ideal candidates for reliable preparation of entangled states in solid-state systems. An optically controlled exciton transfer process is shown to lead to the generation of Bell and GHZ states in systems comprising two and three coupled dots, respectively. The strength and duration of selective light-pulses for producing maximally entangled states are identified by both analytic, and full numerical, solution of the quantum dynamical equations. Experimental requirements to build such entangled states are discussed.
Semiconductor quantum dots coherently driven by pulsed laser are fundamental physical systems which allow studying the dynamical properties of confined quantum states. These systems are attractive candidates for a solid-state qubit, which open the possibility for several investigations in quantum information processing. In this work we study the effects of a specific decoherence process, the spontaneous emission of excitonic states, in a quantum dot molecule. We model our system considering a three-level Hamiltonian and solve the corresponding master equation in the Lindblad form. Our results …
As the bound state of two oppositely charged particles, excitons emerge from optically excited semiconductors as the electronic analogue of a hydrogen atom. In the two-dimensional (2D) case, realized either in quantum well systems or truly 2D materials such as transition metal dichalcogenides, the relative motion of an exciton is described by two quantum numbers: the principal quantum number $n$, and a quantum number $j$ for the angular momentum along the perpendicular axis. Conservation of angular momentum demands that only the $j=0$ states of the excitons are optically active in a system ill…
We show that the quantum decoherence of Forster resonant energy transfer between two optically active molecules can be described by a spin-boson model. This allows us to give quantitative criteria, in terms of experimentally measurable system parameters, that are necessary for coherent Bloch oscillations of excitons between the chromophores. Experimental tests of our results should be possible with Flourescent Resonant Energy Transfer (FRET) spectroscopy. Although we focus on the case of protein-pigment complexes our results are also relevant to quantum dots and organic molecules in a dielectr…
