Swing-up dynamics in quantum emitter cavity systems

Abstract: In the SUPER scheme (Swing-UP of the quantum EmitteR population), excitation of a quantum emitter is achieved with two off-resonant, red-detuned laser pulses. This allows generation of high-quality single photons without the need of complex laser stray light suppression or careful spectral filtering. In the present work, we extend this promising method to quantum emitters, specifically semiconductor quantum dots, inside a resonant optical cavity. A significant advantage of the Super scheme is identified in that it eliminates re-excitation of the quantum emitter by suppressing photon emission during the excitation cycle. This, in turn, leads to almost ideal single photon purity, overcoming a major factor typically limiting the quality of photons generated with quantum dots in high quality cavities. We further find that for cavity-mediated biexciton emission of degenerate photon pairs the Super scheme leads to near-perfect biexciton initialization with very high values of polarization entanglement of the emitted photon pairs.