Photon emission by nanocavity-enhanced quantum anti-Zeno effect in solid-state cavity quantum-electrodynamics

Solid-state cavity quantum-electrodynamics (QED) has great potential owing to advances such as coupled systems combining a nanocavity and a quantum dot (QD). These systems involve two photon-emission mechanisms: the Purcell effect in the weak coupling regime and vacuum Rabi-splitting in the strong coupling regime. In this paper, we describe a third emission mechanism based on the quantum anti-Zeno effect (AZE) induced by the pure-dephasing in a QD. This is significantly enhanced by the inherent characteristics of the nanocavity. This mechanism explains the origin of strong photon emission at a cavity mode largely detuned from a QD, previously considered a counterintuitive, prima facie non-energy-conserving, light-emission phenomenon. These findings could help in controlling the decay and emission characteristics of solid-state cavity QED, and developing solid-state quantum devices. (C) 2008 Optical Society of America