A single-photon emitter coupled to a phononic-crystal resonator in the resolved-sideband regime.

Spinnler, Clemens; Nguyen, Giang N; Wang, Ying; Zhai, Liang; Javadi, Alisa; Erbe, Marcel; Scholz, Sven; Wieck, Andreas D et al. · Nat Commun · 2024

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

A promising route towards the deterministic creation and annihilation of single-phonons is to couple a single-photon emitter to a mechanical resonator. The challenge lies in reaching the resolved-sideband regime with a large coupling rate and a high mechanical quality factor. We achieve this by coupling self-assembled InAs quantum dots to a small mode-volume phononic-crystal resonator with mechanical frequency Ω<sub>m</sub>/2π = 1.466 GHz and quality factor Q<sub>m</sub> = 2.1 × 10<sup>3</sup>. Thanks to the high coupling rate of g<sub>ep</sub>/2π = 2.9 MHz, and by exploiting a matching condition between the effective Rabi and mechanical frequencies, we observe the interaction between the two systems via correlations in the emitted photons. Our results represent a major step towards quantum control of the mechanical resonator via a single-photon emitter.