One of the biggest challenges of nanotechnology is the fabrication of nano-objects with perfectly controlled properties. Here we employ a focused laser beam both to characterize and to {\it in-situ} modify single semiconductor structures by heating them from cryogenic to high temperatures. The heat treatment allows us to blue-shift, in a broad range and with resolution-limited accuracy, the quantized energy levels of light and charge carriers confined in optical microcavities and self-assembled quantum dots (QDs). We demonstrate the approach by tuning an optical mode into resonance with the emission of a single QD and by bringing different QDs in mutual resonance. This processing method may open the way to a full control of nanostructures at the quantum level.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0610074,
title = {{\it In-situ} Laser Microprocessing at the Quantum Level},
author = {Armando Rastelli and Ata Ulhaq and Suwit Kiravittaya and Lijuan Wang and Artur Zrenner and Oliver G. Schmidt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0610074},
year = {2011}
}