Semiconductor cavity QED: Band gap induced by vacuum fluctuations

Espinosa-Ortega, T.; Kyriienko, Oleksandr; Shelykh, I. A.

doi:10.1103/physreva.89.062115

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…It should be noted also that the calculated values of the gap for closed (zero-dimensional) cavities, given in Tab. I, essentially exceed values of the vacuuminduced gaps appearing in open (two-dimensional and one-dimensional) cavities [27][28][29]. Physically, the increasing of gap values in closed (zero-dimensional) cavities as compared with open ones arises from the strong (delta-function-like) singularity in the density of photon states.…”

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“…To study this phenomenon, the new area of interdesciplinary theoretical research at the border between quantum electrodynamics and physics of semiconductors was opened during last years. In the previous papers on the subject [27][28][29], the vacuum-induced modification of electron energy spectrum in solids was studies exclusively for opened cavities, including both two-dimensional cavities and onedimensional ones. Unfortunately, vacuum-induced gaps in these cavities are very small.…”

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Band gaps induced by vacuum photons in closed semiconductor cavities

Arnardottir

Shelykh

2014

Phys. Rev. A

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We consider theoretically a closed (zero-dimensional) semiconductor microcavity where confined vacuum photonic mode is coupled to electrons in valence band of the semiconductor. It is shown that vacuum-induced virtual electron transitions between valence and conduction bands result in renormalization of electron energy spectrum. As a consequence, vacuum-induced band gaps appear within the valence band. Calculated values of the band gaps are of sub-meV scale, that makes this QED effect to be measurable in state-of-the-art experiments.PACS numbers: 42.50. Pq, 42.50.Hz, 71.20.Mq Introduction.-There are physical situations where the electron-photon interaction cannot be considered as a weak perturbation (so-called regime of strong lightmatter coupling). In this regime, it is necessary to consider the system "electron + field" as a whole. Such a bound electron-photon object, which was called "electron dressed by field" (dressed electron), became commonly used model in modern physics [1,2]. The interest in this field is stimulated by the possibility of the achievement of the hybrid -half-light half-matter -excitations which can demonstrate peculiar properties. Therefore, the regime of strong light-matter coupling was extensively investigated both theoretically and experimentally in a variety of the systems, including optical planar microcavities with semiconductor [3-5] and organic [6][7][8] quantum wells, microcavities with individual quantum dots [9-11] and others. Effects of strong coupling can be used for variety of technological applications [12], including novel types of the lasers [13,14], optical switches and logic gates [15][16][17], all-optical integrated circuits [18], sources of entangled photon pairs [19] and others. Among most bright phenomena of strong light-matter coupling, we have to note the field-induced modification of energy spectrum of dressed electrons -also known as a dynamic (ac) Stark effect -which was discovered in atoms many years ago [20] and has been studied in details in various atomic and molecular systems [1,2]. For solids, the dynamic Stark effect results in the gap opening within electron energy bands [21][22][23][24][25].In order to turn usual "bare" electrons into "dressed" electrons, a characteristic energy of electron-photon interaction should be increased. This can be done in two different ways. The first of them consists in using a strong laser-generated electromagnetic field (the case of large photon occupation numbers) [1,2]. The second way consists in decreasing the effective volume where electron-

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Band gaps induced by vacuum photons in closed semiconductor cavities

Arnardottir

Shelykh

2014

Phys. Rev. A

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“…The size of the band gap opening is of the order of hundreds of µeV, which is larger than both other vacuum eects in the absence of a cavity (e.g. the Lamb shift) as well as similar eects that happen in open (two-or one-dimensional cavities [74], and even large enough to be measured. We also nd that the band gap has ne structure that is dependent on the direction of the bulk electron, though this structure becomes hard to distinguish because of the discreteness of the electrons.…”

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confidence: 83%