Quantum light from lossy semiconductor Rydberg excitons

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that semiconductor Rydberg excitons, despite weak coupling to light, can generate strongly antibunched quantum light through excitation blockade and pair-wise scattering, even amid phonon interactions and decay.

Contribution

It reveals a novel mechanism for quantum light generation from weakly coupled semiconductor excitons via excitation blockade and scattering effects.

Findings

Strong antibunching observed in transmitted light.

Effect persists with phonon coupling and decay.

Potential for quantum statistics from weakly coupled excitons.

Abstract

The emergence of photonic quantum correlations is typically associated with emitters strongly coupled to a photonic mode. Here, we show that semiconductor Rydberg excitons, which are only weakly coupled to a free-space light mode can produce strongly antibunched fields, i.e. quantum light. This effect is fueled by micron-scale excitation blockade between Rydberg excitons inducing pair-wise polariton scattering events. Photons incident on an exciton resonance are scatted into blue- and red-detuned pairs, which enjoy relative protection from absorption and thus dominate the transmitted light. We demonstrate that this effect persists in the presence of additional phonon coupling, strong non-radiative decay and across a wide range of experimental parameters. Our results pave the way for the observation of quantum statistics from weakly coupled semiconductor excitons.