Bistable Photon Emission from a Solid-State Single-Atom Laser

TL;DR

This paper predicts bistable photon emission in a solid-state single-atom laser system, demonstrating how electronic transport can control photon statistics, with implications for quantum dot laser development.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of bistability in photon emission from a solid-state single-atom laser and links it to electrical current and shot noise measurements.

Findings

Photon emission distribution forms a tilted ellipse indicating bistability

Switching rates can be derived from electrical current and shot noise

Bistability persists under moderate decoherence and dephasing

Abstract

We predict a bistability in the photon emission from a solid-state single-atom laser comprising a microwave cavity coupled to a voltage-biased double quantum dot. To demonstrate that the single-atom laser is bistable, we evaluate the photon emission statistics and show that the distribution takes the shape of a tilted ellipse. The switching rates of the bistability can be extracted from the electrical current and the shot noise in the quantum dots. This provides a means to control the photon emission statistics by modulating the electronic transport in the quantum dots. Our prediction is robust against moderate electronic decoherence and dephasing and is important for current efforts to realize single-atom lasers with gate-defined quantum dots as the gain medium.