Resonance fluorescence spectra from semiconductor quantum dots coupled to slow-light photonic crystal waveguides

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework to analyze how coupled photon and phonon baths influence resonance fluorescence spectra of quantum dots in structured photonic environments, revealing complex interactions near photonic band edges.

Contribution

It introduces a general polaron master equation approach to study photon-phonon interactions in quantum dot emission within structured photonic reservoirs, including disordered photonic crystal waveguides.

Findings

Photon and phonon effects can counteract each other near the waveguide mode edge.

Structured photonic reservoirs significantly alter quantum dot emission spectra.

The theory applies to realistic disordered photonic crystal waveguides.

Abstract

Using a polaron master equation approach we investigate the resonance fluorescence spectra from coherently driven quantum dots (QDs) coupled to an acoustic phonon bath and a photonic crystal waveguide with a rich local density of photon states (LDOS). Resonance fluorescence spectra from QDs in semiconductor crystals are known to show strong signatures of electron-phonon interactions, but when coupled to a structured photonic reservoir, the QD emission properties are also determined by the frequency dependence of the LDOS of the photon reservoir. Here, we investigate the simultaneous role of coupled photon and phonon baths on the characteristic Mollow triplet spectra from a strongly driven QD. As an example structured photonic reservoir, we first study a photonic crystal coupled cavity waveguide, and find that photons and phonons have counter-interacting effects near the upper mode-edge of the coupled-cavity waveguide, thus establishing the importance of their separate roles in determining the emission spectra. The general theory is developed for arbitrary photonic reservoirs and is further applied to determine resonance the fluorescence spectra from a realistic, disordered W1 photonic crystal waveguide showing important photon-phonon interaction effects that are directly relevant to emerging experiments and theoretical proposals.