Photon Statistics in Collective Strong Coupling: Nano- and Microcavities

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates photon correlations in hybrid emitter-cavity systems, revealing persistent antibunching effects and comparing plasmonic nanocavities with dielectric microcavities, highlighting their similar quantum light emission properties.

Contribution

It provides a unified analysis of photon antibunching phenomena in different cavity types, extending understanding from single emitters to mesoscopic ensembles.

Findings

Photon antibunching persists with increasing ensemble size.

Both conventional and unconventional antibunching are observed.

Similar photon correlation behaviors are found in nanocavities and microcavities.

Abstract

There exists a growing interest in the properties of the light generated by hybrid systems involving a mesoscopic number of emitters as a means of providing macroscopic quantum light sources. In this work, the quantum correlations of the light emitted by a collection of emitters coupled to a generic optical cavity are studied theoretically using an effective Hamiltonian approach. Starting from the single-emitter level, we analyse the persistence of photon antibunching as the ensemble size increases. Not only is the photon blockade effect identifiable, but photon antibunching originated from destructive interference processes (the so-called unconventional antibunching) is also present. We study the dependence of these two types of negative correlations on the spectral detuning between cavity and emitters, as well as its evolution as the time delay between photon detections increases. Throughout this work, the performance of plasmonic nanocavities and dielectric microcavities is compared: despite the distinct energy scales and the differences introduced by their respectively open and closed character, the bunching and antibunching phenomenology presents remarkable similarities in both types of cavities.