Silent white light: Reduction of the second-order intensity correlation coefficient

Abstract

We investigate the intrawaveguide statistics manipulation of broadband light by combining semiconductor quantum dot physics with quantum optics. By cooling a quantum dot superluminescent diode to the liquid nitrogen temperature of 77 K, Blazek et al. [Phys. Rev. A 84, 063840 (2011)1050-294710.1103/PhysRevA.84.063840] have demonstrated a temperature-dependent reduction of the second-order intensity correlation coefficient from 2 for thermal amplified spontaneous emission light to g^{(2)}(0,T=190K)≈1.33. Here, we model the broadband photon statistics assuming amplified spontaneous emission radiation in a pumped, saturable quantum dot gain medium. We demonstrate that, by an intensity increase due to the quantum dot occupation dynamics via the temperature-tuned quasi-Fermi levels, together with the saturation nonlinearity, a statistics manipulation from thermal Bose-Einstein statistics towards Poissonian statistics can be realized, thus producing “silent white light” with a reduced second-order correlation coefficient. Such intensity-noise-reduced broadband radiation is relevant for many applications such as optical coherence tomography, optical communication, or optical tweezers.