Optical nonlinearities near single photon level with a quantum dot coupled to a photonic crystal cavity

Abstract

Over the last decade, exponential increase of information bandwidth over the internet and other communication media has increased the total power consumed by the devices associated with information exchange. With ever increasing number of users, and packing of a higher number of devices onto a chip, there is a great need for reduction in not only the power consumption of the devices but also the costs associated with information transfer. Currently, the benchmark in the energy consumption per logic operation is at femtojoule level and is set by the CMOS industry. However, optical devices based on single photon emitters coupled to a microcavity have the potential to reduce the optical power dissipation down to attojoule levels wherein only few 10s of photons are consumed for a logic operation.

This work presents our theoretical and experimental efforts towards realization of all optical device based on the enhanced nonlinearities of a single photon emitter in a photonic crystal cavity. We show that a single quantum dot coupled to a photonic crystal cavity can be used to route an incoming optical beam with optical power dissipation of 14 attojoules, corresponding to only 65 photons. This value is well below the operational level for current CMOS devices indicating the potential for chip based optical transistors for reduction in energy consumption. The single photon emitters that we use to create the nonlinearity are the quantum dots, which are semiconductor nanostructures that exhibit a discrete energy spectrum. The interaction of the quantum dot, with light confined inside a photonic crystal cavity, results in strong atom-photon interactions which can be used for ultra-low power all optical switching. The strong interactions between a quantum dot and photonic crystal cavity can be further utilized to realize quantum computation schemes on a chip.

I also describe techniques for integrating this transistor into an optical circuit, and discuss methods for post fabrication tuning to make reconfigurable active photonic devices that implement optical data processing at low light levels.