Circularly polarized vacuum field in three-dimensional chiral photonic crystals probed by quantum dot emission

TL;DR

This study demonstrates how quantum dots emit highly circularly polarized light when placed in 3D chiral photonic crystals, revealing the influence of a circularly polarized vacuum field on light-matter interactions.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence of circularly polarized vacuum fields affecting quantum dot emission in 3D chiral photonic structures, a novel exploration of light-matter coupling.

Findings

Quantum dots emit highly circularly polarized light in chiral photonic crystals.

The emission is influenced by differences in photonic density of states.

Spectroscopic and time-resolved measurements confirm the effect.

Abstract

The quantum nature of light-matter interactions in a circularly polarized vacuum field was probed by spontaneous emission from quantum dots in three-dimensional chiral photonic crystals. Due to the circularly polarized eigenmodes along the helical axis in the GaAs-based mirror-asymmetric structures we studied, we observed highly circularly polarized emission from the quantum dots. Both spectroscopic and time-resolved measurements confirmed that the obtained circularly polarized light was influenced by a large difference in the photonic density of states between the orthogonal components of the circular polarization in the vacuum field.