Tunable photon blockade in coupled semiconductor cavities

H. Z. Shen, Y. H. Zhou, and X. X. Yi

Phys. Rev. A 91, 063808 – Published 5 June 2015

Abstract

In this paper, we show that photon blockade can be observed in a system with weak Kerr nonlinearities. The system consists of two spatially overlapping single-mode semiconductor cavities with tunable one- and two-photon tunneling. We find that both conventional and unconventional single-photon blockades are controllable by manipulating the phase in the hopping regardless of the weakness of nonlinearity. We refer to the photon blockade with weak nonlinearities as an unconventional photon blockade. The unconventional photon blockade effect originates from the destructive interference between different paths from the ground state to two-photon states. We analytically derive the exact optimal conditions for strong antibunching, which are in good agreement with those obtained by numerical simulations. The optimal parameters for photon blockade are derived. Based on these parameters, the semiconductor cavity systems can be used as a single-photon source in regimes of both weak and strong nonlinearities.

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Received 28 December 2014
Revised 1 April 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.91.063808

Authors & Affiliations

H. Z. Shen^1,2, Y. H. Zhou^1,2, and X. X. Yi^1,*

¹Center for Quantum Sciences and School of Physics, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China
²School of Physics and Optoelectronic Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China

^*yixx@nenu.edu.cn

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Vol. 91, Iss. 6 — June 2015

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