Optical nonlinearity for few-photon pulses on a quantum dot-pillar cavity device

Giant optical nonlinearity is observed under both continuous-wave and pulsed excitation in a deterministically-coupled quantum dot-micropillar system, in a pronounced strong-coupling regime. Using absolute reflectivity measurements we determine the critical intracavity photon number as well as the input and output coupling efficiencies of the device. Thanks to a near-unity input-coupling efficiency, we demonstrate a record nonlinearity threshold of only 8 incident photons per pulse. The output-coupling efficiency is found to strongly influence this nonlinearity threshold. We show how the fundamental limit of single-photon nonlinearity can be attained in realistic devices, which would provide an effective interaction between two coincident single photons.