Coherent optical control of individual particles has been demonstrated both for atoms and semiconductor quantum dots. Here we demonstrate the emergence of quantum coherent effects in semiconductor Rydberg excitons in bulk Cu2O. Due to the spectral proximity between two adjacent Rydberg exciton states, a single-frequency laser may pump both resonances with little dissipation from the detuning. As a consequence, additional resonances appear in the absorption spectrum that correspond to dressed states consisting of two Rydberg exciton levels coupled to the excitonic vacuum, forming a V-type three-level system, but driven only by one laser light source. We show that the level of pure dephasing in this system is extremely low. These observations are a crucial step towards coherently controlled quantum technologies in a bulk semiconductor.
@article{arxiv.1511.07742,
title = {Signatures of Quantum Coherence in Rydberg Excitons},
author = {P. Grünwald and M. Aßmann and J. Heckötter and D. Fröhlich and M. Bayer and H. Stolz and S. Scheel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.07742},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
7 pages, 7 figures; substantially rewritten, close to published version including supplemental material