Nonlinear Dynamics in Semiconductor Lasers - Abstract
Reitzenstein, Stephan
Advances in semiconductor nanotechnology have triggered considerable research and development of photonic devices on the nanoscale, which feature specific emission characteristics that are related to the quantum nature of the involved emitters. In this work we address the unexplored field of lasing in microcavities with self-feedback close to the quantum limit. A finite fraction of the emission of an electrically driven quantum dot micropillar laser is reflected back into the microcavity by an external mirror. This self-feedback results in a dramatic change in the photon statistics, where the second order photon autocorrelation function at times zero, g^(2)(t), exhibits super-thermal values up to 3.51±0.06. This unique type of strong photon bunching fundamentally differs from g^(2)(0)=2 and g^(2)(0)=1 expected for thermal and coherent light, respectively [1]. It occurs simultaneously with a revival of the bunching signal with a round trip time of the external cavity and is as such indicative of random intensity fluctuations associated with the spiked emission of light at the nW level. [1] F. Albert et al., Nat. Comms. 2, 366 (2011)