Formulas are presented that provide clear physical insight into the phenomenon of extrinsic optical scattering loss in photonic crystal waveguides due to random fabrication imperfections such as surface roughness and disorder. Using a photon Green-function-tensor formalism, we derive explicit expressions for the backscattered and total transmission losses. Detailed calculations for planar photonic crystals yield extrinsic loss values in overall agreement with experimental measurements, including the full dispersion characteristics. We also report that loss in photonic crystal waveguides scales inversely with group velocity, at least, thereby raising serious questions about future low-loss applications based on operating frequencies that approach the photonic band edge.

We show explicitly how the commonly adopted prescription for calculating effective mode volumes is wrong and leads to uncontrolled errors. Instead, we introduce a generalized mode volume that can be easily evaluated based on the mode calculation methods typically applied in the literature, and which allows one to compute the Purcell effect and other interesting optical phenomena in a rigorous and unambiguous way.

Electromagnetic cavity modes in photonic and plasmonic resonators offer rich and attractive regimes for tailoring the properties of light-matter interactions. Yet there is a disturbing lack of a precise definition for what constitutes a cavity mode, and as a result their mathematical properties remain largely unspecified. The lack of a definition is evidenced in part by the diverse nomenclature at use-"resonance," "leaky mode," "quasimode," to name but a few-suggesting that the dissipative nature of cavity modes somehow makes them different from other modes, but an explicit distinction is rarely made. This perspective article aims to introduce the reader to some of the subtleties and working definitions that can be rigorously applied when describing the modal properties of leaky optical cavities and plasmonic nanoresonators. We describe some recent development in the field, including calculation methods for quasinormal modes of both photonic and plasmonic resonators and the concept of a generalized effective mode volume, and we illustrate the theory with several representative cavity structures from the fields of photonic crystals and nanoplasmonics.

We introduce a second quantization scheme based on quasinormal modes, which are the dissipative modes of leaky optical cavities and plasmonic resonators with complex eigenfrequencies. The theory enables the construction of multi-plasmon/photon Fock states for arbitrary three-dimensional dissipative resonators and gives a solid understanding to the limits of phenomenological dissipative Jaynes-Cummings models. In the general case, we show how different quasinormal modes interfere through an off-diagonal mode coupling and demonstrate how these results affect cavity-modified spontaneous emission. To illustrate the practical application of the theory, we show examples using a gold nanorod dimer and a hybrid dielectric-metal cavity structure. arXiv:1808.06392v3 [cond-mat.mes-hall]

We study the resonance fluorescence spectra of a driven quantum dot placed inside a high-Q semiconductor cavity and interacting with an acoustic phonon bath. The dynamics is calculated using a time-convolutionless master equation in the polaron frame. We predict pronounced spectral broadening of the Mollow sidebands through off-resonant cavity emission which, for small cavity-coupling rates, increases quadratically with the Rabi frequency in direct agreement with recent experiments using semiconductor micropillars [S. M. Ulrich et al., preceding Letter, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 247402 (2011)]. We also demonstrate that, surprisingly, phonon coupling actually helps resolve signatures of the elusive second rungs of the Jaynes-Cummings ladder states via off-resonant cavity feeding. Both multiphonon and multiphoton effects are shown to play a qualitatively important role on the fluorescence spectra.

Detailed propagation loss spectrum measurements for line-defect waveguides in silicon photonic crystal slabs are presented, which show record low loss values ͑5 dB/cm͒ and complicated frequency dependence. We quantitatively analyze the origin of the loss spectrum shape using a photon Green function theory and obtain a very good agreement, thus providing an explanation of the complex physical mechanisms responsible for the observed propagation loss. In particular, we demonstrate the influence of out-plane, backward, intermode, and in-plane scattering processes on the observed loss spectra, induced by the structural disorder that occurs during fabrication, and highlight the importance of backward and intermode scattering in these waveguides.

We review the basic light-matter interactions and optical properties of chip-based single photon sources, that are enabled by integrating single quantum dots with planar photonic crystals. A theoretical framework is presented that allows one to connect to a wide range of quantum light propagation effects in a physically intuitive and straightforward way. We focus on the important mechanisms of enhanced spontaneous emission, and efficient photon extraction, using all-integrated photonic crystal components including waveguides, cavities, quantum dots and output couplers. The limitations, challenges, and exciting prospects of developing on-chip quantum light sources using integrated photonic crystal structures are discussed.A sequence of optical pulses (top right) interacting with a single quantum dot embedded in a photonic crystal system, resulting in the emission of a train of single photons on-chip.

We present a quantum optics formalism to study the intensity power broadening of a semiconductor quantum dot interacting with an acoustic-phonon bath and a high-Q microcavity. Power broadening is investigated using a time-convolutionless master equation in the polaron frame, which allows for a nonperturbative treatment of the interaction of the quantum dot with the phonon reservoir. We calculate the full non-Lorentzian photoluminescence (PL) line shapes and numerically extract the intensity linewidths of the quantum-dot exciton and the cavity mode as a function of the pump rate and temperature. For increasing field strengths, multiphonon and multiphoton effects are found to be important, even for phonon-bath temperatures as low as 4 K. We show that the interaction of the quantum dot with the phonon reservoir introduces pronounced features in the power-broadened PL line shape, enabling one to observe clear signatures of electron-phonon scattering. The PL line shapes from cavity pumping and exciton pumping are found to be distinctly different, primarily since the latter is excited through the excitonphonon reservoir. To help explain the underlying physics of phonon scattering on the power-broadened line shape, an effective phonon Lindblad master equation derived from the full time-convolutionless master equation is introduced; we identify and calculate distinct Lindblad scattering contributions from electron-phonon interactions, including effects such as excitation-induced dephasing, incoherent exciton excitation, and exciton-cavity feeding. Our effective phonon master equation is shown to reproduce the full PL intensity and the phonon-coupling effects very well, suggesting that its general Lindblad form may find widespread use in semiconductor cavity-QED.