Quantum correlations of light and matter through environmental transitions

TL;DR

This paper predicts that interactions with vibrational environments in solid-state cavity QED can produce quantum correlations in regimes where atomic systems would behave classically, challenging semiclassical assumptions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that vibrational couplings in solid-state systems can generate quantum correlations, revealing limitations of semiclassical models in these environments.

Findings

Quantum correlations arise due to vibrational interactions in solid-state cavity QED.

The effect is robust across different temperatures and environmental spectral details.

This challenges the classical approximation commonly used in atomic systems.

Abstract

One aspect of solid-state photonic devices that distinguishes them from their atomic counterparts is the unavoidable interaction between system excitations and lattice vibrations of the host material. This coupling may lead to surprising departures in emission properties between solid-state and atomic systems. Here we predict a striking and important example of such an effect. We show that in solid-state cavity quantum electrodynamics, interactions with the host vibrational environment can generate quantum cavity-emitter correlations in regimes that are semiclassical for atomic systems. This behaviour, which can be probed experimentally through the cavity emission properties, heralds a failure of the semiclassical approach in the solid-state, and challenges the notion that coupling to a thermal bath supports a more classical description of the system. Furthermore, it does not rely on the spectral details of the host environment under consideration and is robust to changes in temperature. It should thus be of relevance to a wide variety of photonic devices.