2016/12/31 by Jake Iles-Smith, Dara P. S. McCutcheon, Ahsan Nazir +1 · 181 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Optical Sensing Technologies #Condensed matter physics #Optics #Optoelectronics #Phonon #Photon #Photonic and Optical Devices #Photonics #Physics #Scattering #Semiconductor #Semiconductor Quantum Structures and Devices #cond-mat.mes-hall #quant-ph
paper · pdf · open access · doi:10.1038/nphoton.2017.101
published in Nature Photonics 11(8), 521-526 (Nature Portfolio)
openalex publication_date 2017/07/03 · openalex created_date 2017/07/14 · arxiv created 2019/07/17 · arxiv updated 2019/07/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Semiconductor quantum dots have recently emerged as a leading platform to efficiently generate highly indistinguishable photons, and this work addresses the timely question of how good these solid-state sources can ultimately be. We establish the crucial role of lattice relaxation in these systems in giving rise to trade-offs between indistinguishability and efficiency. We analyse the two source architectures most commonly employed: a quantum dot embedded in a waveguide and a quantum dot coupled to an optical cavity. For waveguides, we demonstrate that the broadband Purcell effect results in a simple inverse relationship, where indistinguishability and efficiency cannot be simultaneously increased. For cavities, the frequency selectivity of the Purcell enhancement results in a more subtle trade-off, where indistinguishability and efficiency can be simultaneously increased, though by the same mechanism not arbitrarily, limiting a source with near-unity indistinguishability (>99%) to an efficiency of approximately 96% for realistic parameters.