Non-classical excitation of a solid-state quantum emitter

TL;DR

This paper reports the first empirical demonstration of resonant excitation of a solid-state quantum emitter with quantized light, revealing photon-dependent nonlinearities and stimulated emission, advancing quantum information applications.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental observation of fully quantized light-matter interaction in a solid-state system, including interference and photon-photon interactions.

Findings

Observation of single-photon interference in a solid-state emitter

Detection of photon-number-dependent optical nonlinearities

Demonstration of stimulated emission with two photons

Abstract

The interaction between a single emitter and a single photon is a fundamental aspect of quantum optics. This interaction allows for the study of various quantum processes, such as emitter-mediated single-photon scattering and effective photon-photon interactions. However, empirical observations of this scenario and its dynamics are rare, and in most cases, only partial approximations to the fully quantized case have been possible. Here, we demonstrate the resonant excitation of a solid-state quantum emitter using quantized input light. For this light-matter interaction, with both entities quantized, we observe single-photon interference introduced by the emitter in a coherent scattering process, photon-number-depended optical non-linearities, and stimulated emission processes involving only two photons. We theoretically reproduce our observations using a cascaded master equation model. Our findings demonstrate that a single photon is sufficient to change the state of a solid-state quantum emitter, and efficient emitter-mediated photon-photon interactions are feasible. These results suggest future possibilities ranging from enabling quantum information transfer in a quantum network to building deterministic entangling gates for photonic quantum computing.