Recent progress towards acoustically mediated carrier injection into individual nanostructures for single photon generation

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in using surface acoustic waves to inject carriers into quantum nanostructures, enabling controlled single photon emission for quantum technologies.

Contribution

It introduces three approaches for acoustically mediated carrier injection into quantum dots and posts, demonstrating initial device prototypes and remote triggering capabilities.

Findings

Successful demonstration of acoustically driven carrier injection

Initial device prototypes for single photon sources

Remote acoustically triggered emission achieved

Abstract

We report on recent progress towards single photon sources based on quantum dot and quantum post nanostructures which are manipulated using surface acoustic waves. For this concept acoustic charge conveyance in a quantum well is used to spatially separate electron and hole pairs and transport these in the plane of the quantum well. When conveyed to the location of a quantum dot or quantum post these carriers are sequentially captured into the confined levels. Their radiative decays gives rise to the emission of a train of single photons. Three different approaches using (i) strain- induced and (ii) self-assembled quantum dots, and (iii) self-assembled quantum posts are discussed and their application potential is discussed. First devices and initial experiments towards the realization of such an acoustically driven single photon source are presented and remote acoustically triggered injection into few individual emitters is demonstrated.