Microscopic approach to the quantized light-matter interaction in semiconductor nanostructures: Complex coupled dynamics of excitons, biexcitons, and photons

TL;DR

This paper develops a microscopic, fully quantized model to study the complex interactions between quantum light and semiconductor nanostructures, capturing excitons, biexcitons, and Coulomb correlations for accurate quantum optical predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel microscopic approach that exactly accounts for many-body Coulomb interactions and carrier dispersions in semiconductor nanostructures interacting with quantum light.

Findings

Biexciton continuum states significantly influence the dynamics.

Distinct single- and two-photon Rabi oscillations observed.

Simplified models excluding continuum states are insufficient.

Abstract

We present a microscopic and fully quantized model to investigate the interaction between semiconductor nanostructures and quantum light fields including the many-body Coloumb interaction between photoexcited electrons and holes. Our approach describes the coupled dynamics of the quantum light field and single and double electron-hole pairs, i.e., excitons and biexcitons, and exactly accounts for Coulomb many-body correlations and carrier band dispersions. Using a simplified yet exact approach, we study a one-dimensional two-band system interacting with a single-mode, two-photon quantum state within a Tavis$\unicode{x2013}$Cummings framework. By employing an exact coherent factorization scheme, the computational complexity is reduced significantly enabling numerical simulations. We also derive a simplified model which includes only the bound $1s$-exciton and biexciton states for comparison. Our simulations reveal distinct single- and two-photon Rabi oscillations, corresponding to photon-exciton and exciton-biexciton transitions. We demonstrate, in particular, that biexciton continuum states significantly modify the dynamics in a way that cannot be captured by simplified models which consider only bound states. Our findings emphasize the importance of a comprehensive microscopic modeling in order to accurately describe quantum optical phenomena of interacting electronic many-body systems.