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Probing many-body correlations using quantum-cascade correlation spectroscopy

Nature Physics volume 20, pages 214–218 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

In quantum optics, the radiative quantum cascade—the consecutive emission of photons from a ladder of energy levels—is of fundamental importance. Two-photon cascaded emission has been instrumental in pioneering experiments to test Bell inequalities and generate entangled photon pairs. More recently, correlated and entangled photon pairs in the visible and microwave domains have been demonstrated using solid-state systems. These experiments rely on the nonlinear nature of the underlying energy ladder, which enables the direct excitation and probing of specific single-photon transitions. Here we use exciton–polaritons to explore the cascaded emission of photons in the regime where individual transitions of the ladder are not resolved. We excite a polariton quantum cascade by off-resonant laser excitation and probe the emitted luminescence using a combination of spectral filtering and correlation spectroscopy. The measured photon–photon correlations exhibit a strong dependence on the polariton energy and therefore on the underlying polaritonic interaction strength, with clear signatures of many-body Feshbach resonances. Our experiment establishes photon cascade correlation spectroscopy as a highly sensitive tool to study the underlying quantum properties of novel semiconductor materials and many-body quantum phenomena.

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Fig. 1: PQC and experimental characterization.
Fig. 2: Correlation spectroscopy as a function of filter detuning.
Fig. 3: Signatures of quantum many-body correlations between polaritons.

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Data availability

All the data that support the plots within this Article and the Supplementary Information and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

All the codes that support the plots within this Article and the Supplementary Information and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank G. M. Matutano and A. Wood for early experimental work, and A. Auffeves for early contributions towards the theoretical modelling. We also thank D. D. Bernardis for discussions. We acknowledge financial support from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems EQUS (CE170100009). I.C. acknowledges financial support from the Provincia Autonoma di Trento, from the Q@TN initiative and from PNRR MUR project PE0000023-NQSTI. C2N acknowledges support from the Paris Ile-de-France Region in the framework of DIM SIRTEQ, the French RENATECH network, the H2020-FETFLAG project PhoQus (820392), the QUANTERA project Interpol (ANR-QUAN-0003-05) and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (project ARQADIA, grant agreement no. 949730). M.R. acknowledges support from the Centre for Quantum Technologies’s Exploratory Initiative program.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Lorenzo Scarpelli, Cyril Elouard.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Lorenzo Scarpelli, Mattias Johnsson & Thomas Volz

  2. ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Lorenzo Scarpelli, Mattias Johnsson, Maxime Richard & Thomas Volz

  3. Inria, Centre de Lyon, Villeurbanne, France

    Cyril Elouard

  4. ENS Lyon, LIP, Lyon, France

    Cyril Elouard

  5. LPCT, CNRS, University of Lorraine, Vandœuvre lès Nancy, France

    Cyril Elouard

  6. Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies (C2N), Palaiseau, France

    Martina Morassi, Aristide Lemaitre, Jacqueline Bloch & Sylvain Ravets

  7. Pitaevskii BEC Center, CNR-INO and Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Trento, Trento, Italy

    Iacopo Carusotto

  8. MajuLab, CNRS-UCA-SU-NUS-NTU International Joint Research Unit, Singapore, Singapore

    Maxime Richard

  9. Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Maxime Richard

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  1. Lorenzo Scarpelli
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Contributions

L.S. built the experimental setup, performed the experiments and analysed the data. C.E. and L.S. realized the theoretical calculations and numerical simulations, with the help of M.J. and M.R. S.R. and A.L. contributed to the design of the sample structure and M.M. and A.L. grew the sample by molecular-beam epitaxy. J.B., S.R. and I.C. participated in the scientific discussions to finalize the work. L.S., C.E., M.R. and T.V. wrote the manuscript, with varying contributions from all authors. L.S., M.R. and T.V. conceived the idea for the experiment. M.R. and T.V. supervised the project.

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Correspondence to Thomas Volz.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–21.

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Scarpelli, L., Elouard, C., Johnsson, M. et al. Probing many-body correlations using quantum-cascade correlation spectroscopy. Nat. Phys. 20, 214–218 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-023-02322-x

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