Fluctuation induced luminescence sidebands in the emission spectra of resonantly driven quantum dots

TL;DR

This paper investigates how rare environmental fluctuations, termed 'black swan' events, induce unique luminescence sidebands in quantum dot emission spectra, combining theoretical modeling and experimental validation.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of Fluctuation Induced Luminescence (FIL) caused by rare environmental fluctuations and develops a quantum dissipative master equation to describe this phenomenon.

Findings

Observation of FIL sidebands in quantum dot spectra

Excellent agreement between theory and experiments

Identification of 'black swan' fluctuation events

Abstract

We describe how complex fluctuations of the local environment of an optically active quantum dot can leave rich fingerprints in its emission spectrum. A new feature, termed "Fluctuation Induced Luminescence" (FIL), is observed to arise from extremely rare fluctuation events that have a dramatic impact on the response of the system-so called "black swan" events. A quantum dissipative master equation formalism is developed to describe this effect phenomenologically. Experiments performed on single quantum dots subject to electrical noise show excellent agreement with our theory, producing the characteristic FIL sidebands.