A search for solar axions has been performed using an axion helioscope which is equipped with a 2.3-m long 4 T superconducting magnet, a gas container to hold dispersion-matching gas, PIN-photodiode X-ray detectors, and a telescope mount mechanism to track the sun. A mass region around m a = 1 eV was newly explored. From the absence of any evidence, analysis sets a limit on axion-photon coupling constant to be g aγγ < 5.6-13.4 × 10 −10 GeV −1 for the axion mass of 0.84 < m a < 1.00 eV at 95% confidence level. It is the first result to search for the axion in the g aγγ -m a parameter region of the preferred axion models with a magnetic helioscope.

The unique emission properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes are attractive for achieving increased functionality in integrated photonics. In addition to being room-temperature telecom-band emitters that can be directly grown on silicon, they are ideal for coupling to nanoscale photonic structures. Here we report on high-efficiency coupling of individual air-suspended carbon nanotubes to silicon photonic crystal nanobeam cavities. Photoluminescence images of dielectric- and air-mode cavities reflect their distinctly different mode profiles and show that fields in the air are important for coupling. We find that the air-mode cavities couple more efficiently, and estimated spontaneous emission coupling factors reach a value as high as 0.85. Our results demonstrate advantages of ultralow mode-volumes in air-mode cavities for coupling to low-dimensional nanoscale emitters.

We demonstrated the strong coupling between a one-dimensional photonic crystal nanobeam cavity and a single quantum dot (QD). Thanks to a high quality factor (∼25 000) with small mode volume [0.38×(n/λ)3] of the nanobeam cavity, an anticrossing behavior with a vacuum Rabi splitting of 226 μeV was observed. The ratio of the QD-cavity coupling strength to the cavity decay rate, which is a figure of merit of quantum optical applications, is estimated to 2.1. This is the highest value among any QD-based cavity quantum electrodynamics systems reported so far.

Strong light matter interactions between semiconductor quantum dots and optical micro/nanocavities are useful resources for developing quantum information processing devices and for exploring diverse quantum optical phenomena. In pursuit of better device performances and novel physics, it is desirable to achieve a larger coupling constant between the quantum dot and the cavity while keeping the high coherence of the coupled system. In this letter, we report the observation of a large vacuum Rabi splitting of ∼328 μeV using a single InAs quantum dot embedded in a GaAs-based H0 photonic crystal nanocavity, which possesses a near-diffraction limited mode volume as well as a high experimental Q factor of ∼52 000. The resulting figure of merit of the strongly coupled systems, defined as a ratio of the coupling constant to the cavity decay rate, reaches 6.4, which is the record high value for semiconductor QD-nanocavity systems reported to date.