Thesis presented October 24, 2012

Abstract:
In the framework of this thesis, single InAs/GaAs quantum dot devices were studied by optical means. Starting with a general description of self-assembled InAs QDs, two types of single QD devices were presented. The first approach was a tapered GaAs photonic wire embedding single InAs QDs whose efficiency as a single photon source was previously shown to be 90%. We investigated several optical properties of the single QDs. The charged and neutral states of the QD were identified and selectively excited using quasi-resonant excitation. The first original result of this thesis is the observation of a continuous temporal blue-drift of the QD emission energy. We attributed this blue drift to oxygen adsorption onto the sidewall of the wire, which modified the surface charge and hence the electric field seen by the QD. Moreover, we demonstrated that a proper coating of the GaAs photonic nanowire surface suppressed the drift. The temperature effect on this phenomenon revealed an adsorption peak around 20K, which corresponds to the adsorption of oxygen on GaAs. This observation is in good agreement with previous temperature studies with a tapered photonic wire. This was the first study of the spectral stability of photonic wires embedding QDs, crucial for resonant quantum optics experiments. As an alternative, we took advantage of this temporal drift to tune QD emission energies. In a controlled way, we tuned into resonance two different QDs which were embedded in the same photonic nanowire. In the last part of this work, we studied the influence of the stress on single QDs contained in a trumpet-like GaAs photonic wire. The main effect of stress is to shift the luminescence lines of a QD. We applied the stress by exciting mechanical vibration modes of the wire. When the wire is driven at its the mechanical resonance the time-integrated photoluminescence spectrum is broaden up to 1 meV owing to the oscillating stress, The measured spectral modulation is a first signature of strain-mediated coupling between a mechanical resonator and embedded QD single light emitter. With a stroboscopic technique, we isolated a certain phase of the oscillating wire and thereby selected a value of QD emission energies. As a highlight of our study, we managed to bring two different QDs contained in the same wire into resonance by controlling their relative phase. In addition, we could extract the 2D spatial positioning of embedded QDs from the spectral shifts observed for two orthogonal mechanical polarizations. The investigation of the strain-mediated tuning of QDs can, therefore, be an effective tool to explore the QD positions without destroying the sample.

Keywords:
Single photon, Waveguide, Photonic wire, Semiconductor, Quantum dot, Optical spectroscopy, Stroboscopy, Nanophotonics, Mechanics, Nanomechanics, Hybrid system, Stress, Strain, Quantum optics

On-line thesis.