Entangled Photon Pair Generator Via Biexciton–Exciton Cascade in Semiconductor Quantum Dots and its Simulation

Abstract

The generation of entangled photon pairs is highly useful for many types of quantum technologies. In this work an entangled photon pair generator that utilizes the biexciton–exciton cascade in semiconductor quantum dots is described on a physical, mathematical, and software level. The system is implemented and simulated as a self-contained component in a framework for bigger quantum optical experiments. Thus, it is a description to further the holistic understanding of the system for interdisciplinary audiences in a hopefully simple yet sufficient manner. It is described from the condensed matter physics fundamentals, over the most important quantum optical properties, to a mathematical description of the used model, and finally a software description and simulation, making it an executable description of such a system. We provide a compact description in the Kraus operator formalism to seamlessly incorporate such an entangled photon pair generator simulation component into bigger simulations consisting of multiple components at a reasonable computational cost. The simulation accommodates a wide range of parameter regimes and makes it possible to simulate many different excitation strategies. This includes resonant two-photon excitation, adiabatic rapid passage chirped excitation, and dichromatic pulsed excitation.