Correlations between Cascaded Photons from Spatially Localized Biexcitons in ZnSe

Nano Lett. 2022 Dec 14;22(23):9457-9461. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c03527. Epub 2022 Nov 28.

Abstract

Radiative cascades emit correlated photon pairs, providing a pathway for the generation of entangled photons. The realization of a radiative cascade with impurity atoms in semiconductors, a leading platform for the generation of quantum light, would therefore provide a new avenue for the development of entangled photon pair sources. Here we demonstrate a radiative cascade from the decay of a biexciton at an impurity-atom complex in a ZnSe quantum well. The emitted photons show clear temporal correlations revealing the time-ordering of the cascade. Our result establishes impurity atoms in ZnSe as a potential platform for photonic quantum technologies using radiative cascades.

Keywords: ZnSe; biexciton; donor bound exciton; quantum well; radiative cascade.