Published papers

We demonstrate lasing in a single nanowire with quantum dots as an active medium embedded on poly(dimethylsiloxane) membranes towards application in nanowire-based flexible nanophotonic devices. Nanowire laser structures with 50 quantum dots are grown on patterned GaAs(111)B substrates and then transferred from the as-grown substrates on poly(dimethylsiloxane) transparent flexible organosilicon membranes, by means of spin-casting and curing processes. We observe lasing oscillation in the transferred single nanowire cavity with quantum dots at 1.425 eV with a threshold pump pulse fluence of ∼876 μJ/cm2, which enables the realization of high-performance multifunctional NW-based flexible photonic devices.

Atomically thin black phosphorus (BP) is an emerging two dimensional (2D) material exhibiting bright photoluminescence in the near infrared region. Coupling its radiation to photonic nanostructures will be an important step toward the realization of 2D material based nanophotonic devices that operate efficiently in the near infrared region, which includes the technologically important optical telecommunication wavelength bands. In this letter, we demonstrate the optical coupling between atomically thin BP and a 2D photonic crystal nanocavity. We employed a home-build dry transfer apparatus for placing a thin BP flake on the surface of the nanocavity. Their optical coupling was analyzed through measuring cavity mode emission under optical carrier injection at room temperature.

Repeated injection of spin-polarized carriers in a quantum dot (QD) leads to the polarization of nuclear spins, a process known as dynamic nuclear spin polarization (DNP). Here, we report the observation of p-shell carrier assisted DNP in single QDs at zero external magnetic field. The nuclear field - measured by using the Overhauser shift of the singly charged exciton state of the QDs - continues to increase, even after the carrier population in the s-shell saturates. This is also accompanied by an abrupt increase in nuclear spin buildup time as p-shell emission overtakes that of the s shell. We attribute the observation to p-shell electrons strongly altering the nuclear spin dynamics in the QD, supported by numerical simulation results based on a rate equation model of coupling between electron and nuclear spin system. Dynamic nuclear spin polarization with p-shell carriers could open up avenues for further control to increase the degree of nuclear spin polarization in QDs.

We demonstrate precise and quick detection of the positions of quantum dots (QDs) embedded in two-dimensional photonic crystal nanocavities. We apply this technique to investigate the QD position dependence of the optical coupling between the QD and the nanocavity. We use a scanning electron microscope (SEM) operating at a low acceleration voltage to detect surface bumps induced by the QDs buried underneath. This enables QD detection with a sub-10 nm precision. We then experimentally measure the vacuum Rabi spectra to extract the optical coupling strengths (gs) between single QDs and cavities, and compare them to the values estimated by a combination of the SEM-measured QD positions and electromagnetic cavity field simulations. We found a highly linear relationship between the local cavity field intensities and the QD-cavity gs, suggesting the validity of the point dipole approximation used in the estimation of the gs. The estimation using SEM has a small standard deviation of ±6.2%, which potentially enables the high accuracy prediction of g prior to optical measurements. Our technique will play a key role for deeply understanding the interaction between QDs and photonic nanostructures and for advancing QD-based cavity quantum electrodynamics.

Light with nonzero orbital angular momentum (OAM) or twisted light is promising for quantum communication applications such as OAM-entangled photonic qubits. Methods and devices for the conversion of the photonic OAM to photonic spin angular momentum (SAM), as well as for the photonic SAM to electronic SAM transformation are known but the direct conversion between the photonic OAM and electronic SAM is not available within a single device. Here, we propose a scheme which converts photonic OAM to electronic SAM and vice versa within a single nanophotonic device. We employed a photonic crystal nanocavity with an embedded quantum dot (QD) which confines an electron spin as a stationary qubit. The confined spin-polarized electrons could recombine with holes to give circularly polarized emission, which could drive the rotation of the nanocavity modes via the strong optical spin-orbit interaction. The rotating modes then radiate light with nonzero OAM, allowing this device to serve as a transmitter. As this can be a unitary process, the time-reversed case enables the device to function as a receiver. This scheme could be generalized to other systems with a resonator and quantum emitters such as a microdisk and defects in diamond for example. Our scheme shows the potential for realizing an (ultra)compact electronic SAM-photonic OAM interface to accommodate OAM as an additional degree of freedom for quantum information purposes.

Thresholdless lasing is an outstanding challenge in laser science and is achievable only in devices having near unity quantum efficiency even when not lasing. Such lasers are expected to exhibit featureless linear light output curves. However, such thresholdless behavior hinders identification of the laser transition, triggering a long-lasting argument on how to identify the lasing. Here, we demonstrate thresholdless lasing in a semiconductor quantum dot nanolaser with a photonic crystal nanocavity. We employ cavity resonant excitation for enabling the thresholdless operation via focused carrier injection into high cavity field regions. Under conventional (above bandgap) excitation, the same nanolaser exhibits a typical thresholded lasing transition, thereby facilitating a systematic comparison between the thresholdless and thresholded laser transitions in the single device. Our approach enables a clear verification of the thresholdless lasing and reveals core elements for its realization using quantum dots, paving the way to the development of ultimately energy-efficient nanolasers.

We report time domain observation of vacuum Rabi oscillations in a single quantum dot strongly coupled to a nanocavity under incoherent optical carrier injection. We realize a photonic crystal nanocavity with a very high quality factor of >80000 and employ it to clearly resolve the ultrafast vacuum Rabi oscillations by simple photoluminescence-based experiments. We found that the time domain vacuum Rabi oscillations were largely modified when changing the pump wavelength and intensity, even when marginal changes were detected in the corresponding photoluminescence spectra. We analyze the measured time domain oscillations by fitting to simulation curves obtained with a cavity quantum electrodynamics model. The observed modifications of the oscillation curves were mainly induced by the change in the carrier capture and dephasing dynamics in the quantum dot, as well as the change in bare-cavity emission. This result suggests that vacuum Rabi oscillations can be utilized as a highly sensitive probe for the quantum-dot dynamics. Our work points out a powerful alternative to conventional spectral-domain measurements for a deeper understanding of the vacuum Rabi dynamics in quantum-dot-based-cavity quantum electrodynamics systems.

Topological edge states exist at the interfaces between two topologically distinct materials. The presence and number of such modes are deterministically predicted from the bulk band topologies, known as the bulk-edge correspondence. This principle is highly useful for predictably controlling optical modes in resonators made of photonic crystals (PhCs), leading to the recent demonstrations of microscale topological lasers. Meanwhile, zero-dimensional topological trapped states in the nanoscale remained unexplored, despite its importance for enhancing light–matter interactions and for wide applications including single-mode nanolasers. Here, we report a topological PhC nanocavity with a near-diffraction-limited mode volume and its application to single-mode lasing. The topological origin of the nanocavity, formed at the interface between two topologically distinct PhCs, guarantees the existence of only one mode within its photonic bandgap. The observed lasing accompanies a high spontaneous emission coupling factor stemming from the nanoscale confinement. These results encompass a way to greatly downscale topological photonics.

We fabricated a two dimensional photonic crystal nanocavity embedding a spatially-isolated active region containing InAs quantum dots using crystal regrowth with molecular beam epitaxy. We observed a cavity mode with a quality factor over 10,000, despite the existence of a mound structure on top of the buried active region due to faceting during the regrowth.

We measured the emission decay rates of self-assembled InAs single quantum dots (QDs) embedded in subwavelength-width semiconductor waveguides with and without Au side claddings. The Au claddings increased the decay rate of single QDs by ∼2 times, which is consistent with numerical simulations taking account of fabrication imperfection.

We report lasing oscillation in a zero-dimensional edge state formed at the boundary of two photonic crystal nanobeams with distinct band topologies. The topological origin of the nanocavity mode ensures a single mode operation.

We report lasing oscillation in a zero-dimensional edge state formed at the boundary of two photonic crystal nanobeams with distinct band topologies. The topological origin of the nanocavity mode ensures a single mode operation.

We report quantum dot single photon sources coupled to glass-clad wire waveguides by transfer printing, which enables the heterogeneous source integration in a simple pick-and-place manner. A high waveguide coupling efficiency >60% is experimentally demonstrated.

We report quantum dot single photon sources coupled to glass-clad wire waveguides by transfer printing, which enables the heterogeneous source integration in a simple pick-and-place manner. A high waveguide coupling efficiency > 60% is experimentally demonstrated.

We report the hybrid integration of quantum dot nanolasers on silicon photonic circuits using transfer printing. The pick-and-place assembly method facilitates the integration of two nanolasers on a single CMOS-processed waveguide that supports two-wavelength output.

We report the hybrid integration of quantum dot nanolasers on silicon photonic circuits using transfer printing. The pick-and-place assembly method facilitates the integration of two nanolasers on a single CMOS-processed waveguide that supports two-wavelength output.

We report a quantum-dot single-photon source integrated onto a CMOS-processed silicon waveguide. The necessary hybrid integration was done in a simple pick-and-place manner with transfer printing, thus fully maintaining the compatibility with CMOS-back-end technology.

We report the time-domain observation of vacuum Rabi oscillations in a single quantum dot-photonic crystal nanocavity system under optical carrier injection. A significantlyimproved cavity Q-factor facilitates the direct access to the ultrafast exciton-photon dynamics.

We report the time-domain observation of vacuum Rabi oscillations in a single quantum dot-photonic crystal nanocavity system under optical carrier injection. A significantly-improved cavity Q-factor facilitates the direct access to the ultrafast exciton-photon dynamics.

We will discuss a topological locarized state of light realizedin a photonic crystal (PhC) nanbeam platform. By carefuly tunig the unit cell structure, we can design two topologically distinct PhC nanobeams. The bulk-edge correpondence guarantees the existence of single localized mode at the interface between them within their common bandgap. We demonstrate the lasing osscilation using the mode as a nanocavity mode.