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Ultrafast Coherent Spectroscopy of Single Semiconductor Quantum Dots

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Semiconductor Nanostructures

Part of the book series: NanoScience and Technology ((NANO))

Abstract

This chapter summarizes our recent work—performed within the project B6 of the Sonderforschungsbereich 296—on combining ultrafast spectroscopy and near-field microscopy to probe the nonlinear optical response of a single quantum dot and of a pair of dipole-coupled quantum dots on a femtosecond time scale. We demonstrate coherent control of both amplitude and phase of the coherent quantum dot polarization by studying Rabi oscillations and the optical Stark effect in an individual interface quantum dot. By probing Rabi oscillations in a pair of laterally coupled interface quantum dots, we identify couplings between excitonic dipole moments and reveal the microscopic origin of these couplings. Our results show that although semiconductor quantum dots resemble in many respects atomic systems, Coulomb many-body interactions can contribute significantly to their optical nonlinearities on ultrashort time scales. This is important for realizing potentially scalable nonlocal quantum gates in chains of dipole-coupled dots, but also means that decoherence phenomena induced by many-body interactions need to be carefully controlled.

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Authors
  1. Christoph Lienau
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  2. Thomas Elsaesser
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Festkörperphysik, TU Berlin, Fakultät Mathematik/Naturwissenschaften, Hardenbergstr. 36, 10623, Berlin, Germany

    Dieter Bimberg

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Lienau, C., Elsaesser, T. (2008). Ultrafast Coherent Spectroscopy of Single Semiconductor Quantum Dots. In: Bimberg, D. (eds) Semiconductor Nanostructures. NanoScience and Technology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77899-8_15

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