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Cavity-stimulated Raman emission from a single quantum dot spin

Nature Photonics volume 8, pages 442–447 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Solid-state quantum emitters have shown strong potential for applications in quantum information, but the spectral inhomogeneity of these emitters poses a significant challenge. We address this issue in a cavity–quantum dot system by demonstrating cavity-stimulated Raman spin flip emission. This process avoids populating the excited state of the emitter and generates a photon that is Raman shifted from the laser and enhanced by the cavity. The emission is spectrally narrow and tunable over a range of at least 125 GHz, which is two orders of magnitude greater than the natural linewidth. We obtain the regime in which the Raman emission is spin dependent, which couples the photon to a long-lived electron spin qubit. This process can enable an efficient, tunable source of indistinguishable photons and deterministic entanglement of distant spin qubits in a photonic-crystal quantum network.

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Figure 1: Concept of Raman emission from a cavity–QD system.
Figure 2: InAs quantum dot coupled to an optical cavity.
Figure 3: Resonant Raman emission.
Figure 4: Cavity-stimulated Raman emission.
Figure 5: Spin selectivity and spin-photon correlation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank J. Lawall for advice on high-resolution spectroscopy and on building a scanning Fabry–Pérot filter. The authors also thank H. Wang for discussions on the physics of cavity–quantum electrodynamics. This work was supported by a Multi-University Research Initiative (US Army Research Office; W911NF0910406) and the US Office of Naval Research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, 20375, DC, USA

    Timothy M. Sweeney, Samuel G. Carter, Allan S. Bracker, Chul Soo Kim, Lily Yang, Patrick M. Vora, Erin R. Cleveland & Daniel Gammon

  2. Sotera Defense Solutions, Annapolis Junction, Maryland, 20701, USA

    Mijin Kim

  3. US Naval Academy, Annapolis, 21402, Maryland, USA

    Peter G. Brereton

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  1. Timothy M. Sweeney
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Contributions

T.M.S., S.G.C., A.S.B. and D.G. conceived and designed the experiments and samples. A.S.B. grew the quantum dot samples. M.K., C.S.K. and A.S.B. processed photonic crystals and gates in the samples. E.R.C and T.M.S. developed atomic layer deposition tuning of photonic-crystal cavities. T.M.S., S.G.C., L.Y., P.M.V. and P.G.B. optically characterized the cavities and quantum dots. T.M.S. and S.G.C. performed the Raman spin-flip emission experiments.

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Correspondence to Daniel Gammon.

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Sweeney, T., Carter, S., Bracker, A. et al. Cavity-stimulated Raman emission from a single quantum dot spin. Nature Photon 8, 442–447 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2014.84

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