Control of the electromagnetic field in a cavity by an external perturbation

A prototypical experiment in cavity quantum electrodynamics involves controlling the light-matter interaction by tuning the frequency of a cavity mode in- and out-of resonance with the frequency of a quantum emitter,1-3 while the field amplitude is generally unaltered. The opposite situation, where one perturbs the spatial pattern of a cavity mode without changing its frequency, has been considered only recently in a few works.4, 5 Changing the amplitude of the field at the emitter's position has important applications, at it allows a real-time control of the light-matter coupling rate, and therefore a direct control of processes such as spontaneous emission and Rabi oscillations. In view of this large potential, in this paper we discuss general design principles that allow obtaining large variations of the electromagnetic field, without change of the frequency, upon an external perturbation of the cavity. We showcase the application of these rules to two photonic structures, a single Fabry-Perot cavity and a coupled three-cavity system. As showed by our analysis and by the examples provided, a small frequency spacing between the modes of the unperturbed cavity is an important requirement to obtain large field variations upon small perturbations. In this regard, a coupled-cavity system, where the frequency spacing is controlled by the interaction rates between the single cavities, constitutes the most promising system to achieve large modulations of the field amplitude.

[1]  G. Sęk,et al.  Strong coupling in a single quantum dot semiconductor microcavity system , 2006, SPIE OPTO.

[2]  J. J. Degnan,et al.  Theory of the optimally coupled Q-switched laser , 1989 .

[3]  R. Stephenson.  A and V , 1962, The British journal of ophthalmology.

[4]  G. Rupper,et al.  Vacuum Rabi splitting with a single quantum dot in a photonic crystal nanocavity , 2004, Nature.

[5]  Steven G. Johnson,et al.  Molding the flow of light , 2001, Comput. Sci. Eng..

[6]  P. Deotare,et al.  Programmable photonic crystal nanobeam cavities. , 2010, Optics express.

[7]  Hyatt M. Gibbs,et al.  Scanning a photonic crystal slab nanocavity by condensation of xenon , 2005 .

[8]  Romuald Houdré,et al.  Temperature tuning of the optical properties of planar photonic crystal microcavities , 2004 .

[9]  C.J. Chang-Hasnain,et al.  Tunable VCSEL , 2000, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[10]  P ? ? ? ? ? ? ? % ? ? ? ? , 1991 .

[11]  Andrea Fiore,et al.  Control of the electromagnetic environment of a quantum emitter by shaping the vacuum field in a coupled-cavity system , 2015 .

[12]  E. Linfield,et al.  Fully tuneable, Purcell-enhanced solid-state quantum emitters , 2015 .

[13]  S. Girvin,et al.  Quantum noise interference and backaction cooling in cavity nanomechanics. , 2009, Physical review letters.

[14]  P. Monnier,et al.  Tuning a two-dimensional photonic crystal resonance via optical carrier injection. , 2005, Optics letters.

[16]  E. Linfield,et al.  Tailoring the Photon Hopping by Nearest-Neighbor and Next-Nearest-Neighbor Interaction in Photonic Arrays , 2015 .

[17]  E. Linfield,et al.  Spontaneous emission control of single quantum dots by electromechanical tuning of a photonic crystal cavity , 2012, 1207.2980.

[18]  S. Höfling,et al.  Electromechanical tuning of vertically-coupled photonic crystal nanobeams. , 2012, Optics express.

[19]  D. Wiersma,et al.  Spectral tuning and near-field imaging of photonic crystal microcavities , 2008 .

[20]  van Pj René Veldhoven,et al.  Electromechanical wavelength tuning of double-membrane photonic crystal cavities , 2011, 1104.1112.

[21]  Andrea Fiore,et al.  Ultrafast non-local control of spontaneous emission. , 2013, Nature nanotechnology.

[22]  A. Fiore,et al.  Coherent Atom-Phonon Interaction through Mode Field Coupling in Hybrid Optomechanical Systems. , 2016, Physical review letters.

[23]  O. Painter,et al.  Electrostatically tunable optomechanical "zipper" cavity laser , 2010, 1006.5275.

[24]  D. Wiersma,et al.  Young's type interference for probing the mode symmetry in photonic structures. , 2011, Physical review letters.

[25]  Maria Kafesaki,et al.  Controlling the resonance of a photonic crystal microcavity by a near-field probe. , 2005, Physical review letters.

[26]  Yoshinori Tanaka,et al.  On-demand transfer of trapped photons on a chip , 2016, Science Advances.

[27]  A. Messiah,et al.  Quantum mechanics, v.2 , 1961 .

[28]  Xiaosong Tang,et al.  An in-plane nano-mechanics approach to achieve reversible resonance control of photonic crystal nanocavities. , 2010, Optics express.

[29]  Andrea Fiore,et al.  Lithographic and optical tuning of InGaAsP membrane photonic crystal nanocavities with embedded InAs quantum dots , 2009 .