Photon blockade and nonlinear effects for a quantum dot strongly coupled to a semiconductor microcavity

Our model comprehensively simulates modern nanoscale semiconductor microcavities incorporating cavity quantum electrodynamics within both the weak and strong coupling regimes, using on-resonant laser excitation and nonresonant excitation due to a wetting layer. For weak coupling, the most significant effect is photon antibunching with nonresonant emission. We investigate how the antibunching characteristics change as the cavity finesse is increased towards the strong coupling regime. Antibunching can also be observed in a strongly coupled system with resonant excitation, using the photon blockade mechanism which has been demonstrated in atom systems. We calculate what cavity parameters are required to observe this effect. Experimentally these studies are equivalent to nonlinear pump probe measurements, where a strong pump, either resonant or nonresonant, is used to excite the coupled system, and the resulting state is characterized using a weak, resonant probe beam.