Structured Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics

A cavity quantum electrodynamics (cQED) system consisting of a confined single photon and a single quantum emitter serves as a fundamental block for quantum optics and photonic quantum technologies.

The canonical optical mode employed in the conventional cavity quantum electrodynamics features a uniform polarization distribution, leading to the scalar light-matter interaction in most existing experiments.

Despite the rapid progress in the generation of structured light with spatially varied polarizations, the structured light-matter interaction, especially at the single quanta level, is highly intriguing yet largely unexplored.

Here, we present the structured light-matter interaction at the single-photon level in a semiconductor cavity quantum electrodynamics system.

Four distinct structured cavity modes that are spectrally close to each other are constructed in a micropillar cavity.

By spatially locating a single epitaxial quantum dot (QD) at the periphery of a semiconductor micropillar cavity and spectrally tuning the QD emission wavelength into the resonances of the structured cavity modes, cavity-enhanced single-photon emissions with spin-locked chiral orbital angular momentum (OAM) and engineerable spin-orbit entanglements are achieved within a single wavelength-scale device.

Our work opens an unexplored paradigm of structured quantum light-matter interactions and may further advance chiral quantum optics and high-dimensional photonic quantum technology.