Study on Frequency Coherence Properties of Light Beams

This paper presents a new concept of frequency coherence in the frequency-time domain to describe the field correlations between two lightwaves with different frequencies. The coherence properties of the modulated beams from lightwave sources with different spectral widths and the modes of Fabry-Wrot (FP) laser are investigated. It is shown that the lightwave and its corresponding sidebands produced by the optical intensity modulation are perfectly coherent. The measured linewidth of the beat signal is narrow and almost identical no matter how wide the spectral width of the beam is. The frequency spacing of the adjacent FP modes is beyond the operation frequency range of the measurement instruments. In our experiment, optical heterodyne technique is used to investigate the frequency coherence of the modes of FP laser by means of the frequency shift induced by the optical intensity modulation. Experiments show that the FP modes are partially coherent and the mode spacing is relatively fixed even when the wavelength changes with ambient temperature, bias current and other factors. Therefore, it is possible to generate stable and narrow-linewidth signals at frequencies corresponding to several mode intervals of the laser.

Optical manipulation of single electron spin in doped and undoped quantum dots

The optical manipulation of electron spins is of great benefit to solid-state quantum information processing. In this letter, we provide a comparative study on the ultrafast optical manipulation of single electron spin in the doped and undoped quantum dots. The study indicates that the experimental breakthrough can be preliminarily made in the undoped quantum dots, because of the relatively less demand.

Theory of ultrafast optical manipulation of electron spins in quantum wells

Based on a multiparticle-state stimulated Raman adiabatic passage approach, a comprehensive theoretical study of the ultrafast optical manipulation of electron spins in quantum wells is presented. In addition to corroborating experimental findings [Gupta , Science 292, 2458 (2001)], we improve the expression for the optical-pulse-induced effective magnetic field, in comparison with the one obtained via the conventional single-particle ac Stark shift. Further study of the effect of hole-spin relaxation reveals that, while the coherent optical manipulation of electron spin in undoped quantum wells would deteriorate in the presence of relatively fast hole-spin relaxation, the coherent control in doped systems can be quite robust against decoherence. The implications of the present results on quantum dots will also be discussed. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.

Quantum computation with coupled quantum dots embedded in optical microcavities

Based on an idea that spatial separation of charge states can enhance quantum coherence, we propose a scheme for a quantum computation with the quantum bit (qubit) constructed from two coupled quantum dots. Quantum information is stored in the electron-hole pair state with the electron and hole located in different dots, which enables the qubit state to be very long-lived. Universal quantum gates involving any pair of qubits are realized by coupling the quantum dots through the cavity photon which is a hopeful candidate for the transfer of long-range information. The operation analysis is carried out by estimating the gate time versus the decoherence time.

Effects of piezoelectricity and spontaneous polarization on electronic and optical properties of wurtzite III-V nitride quantum wells

A theoretical model accounting for the macropolarization effects in wurtzite III-V nitrides quantum wells (QWs) is presented. Energy dispersions and exciton binding energies are calculated within the framework of effective-mass theory and variational approach, respectively. Exciton-associated transitions (EATs) are studied in detail. An energy redshift as high as 450 meV is obtained in Al0.25GaN0.75/GaN QWs. Also, the abrupt reduction of optical momentum matrix elements is derived as a consequence of quantum-confined Stark effects. EAT energies are compared with recent photoluminescence (PL) experiments and numerical coherence is achieved. We propose that it is the EAT energy, instead of the conduction-valence-interband transition energy that is comparable with the PL energy. To restore the reduced transition rate, we apply an external electric field. Theoretical calculations show that with the presence of the external electric field the optical matrix elements for EAT increase 20 times. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.

Six-wave mixing phase-dispersion by optical heterodyne detection in dressed reverse N-type four-level system

We have investigated the dressed effects of non-degenerate four-wave mixing (NDFWM) and demonstrated a phase-sensitive method of studying the fifth-order nonlinear susceptibility due to atomic coherence in RN-type four-level system. In the presence of a strong coupling field, NDFWM spectrum exhibits Autler-Townes splitting, accompanied by either suppression or enhancement of the NDFWM signal, which is directly related to the competition between the absorption and dispersion contributions. The heterodyne-detected nonlinear absorption and dispersion of six-wave mixing signal in the RN-type system show that the hybrid radiation-matter detuning damping oscillation is in the THz range and can be controlled and modified through the colour-locked correlation of twin noisy fields.

Modal correction for fiber-coupling efficiency in free-space optical communication systems through atmospheric turbulence

High-speed free-space optical communication systems have recently used fiber-optical components. The coupling efficiency with which the received laser beam can be coupled into a single-mode fiber is noticeably limited by atmospheric turbulence due to the degradation of its spatial coherence. Fortunately, adaptive optics (AO) can alleviate this limitation by partially correcting the turbulence-distorted wavefront. The coupling efficiency improvement provided by Zernike modal AO correction is numerically evaluated. It is found that the first 3-20 corrected polynomials can considerably improve the fiber-coupling efficiency. The improvement brought by AO is compared with that brought by a coherent fiber array. Finally, a hybrid technique that integrates AO and a coherent fiber array is proposed. Results show that the hybrid technique outperforms each of the two above-mentioned techniques. (C) 2009 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.