Highly entangled photon pairs generated from the biexciton cascade transition in a quantum-dot–metal-nanoparticle hybrid system

Abstract

The entanglement between photon pairs generated from the biexciton cascade transition in a semi- conductor quantum dot located in the vicinity of a metal nanoparticle is theoretically investigated. In the model scheme, the biexciton-exciton and exciton-ground state transitions are assumed to be coupled to two principal plasmon modes of orthogonal polarizations. For a broad spectral window, because the horizontal and vertical spectra are overlapped, the biexciton and exciton photons are degenerate in energy. This allows us to overcome the natural splitting between the intermediate exciton states. Moreover, the degree of entanglement depends on the geometrical parameters of the system. i.e., the radius of the metal nanoparticle and the distance between the quantum dot and the nanoparticle. The results reveal that such a hybrid system profoundly modifies the photon entanglement even in the absence of strong coupling between the emitter and the metal nanosphere.