Topical review on acousto-optical Floquet engineering of single-photon emitters

Abstract

The combination of solid state single-photon emitters and mechanical excitations on a common platform is a promising approach for the development of hybrid quantum technologies. In this topical review we discuss state-of-the-art platforms for emitter-based acousto-optics and their feasibility for acousto-optical Floquet engineering. To this aim we investigate theoretically the resonance fluorescence (RF) spectrum of an acoustically modulated single-photon emitter under arbitrarily strong optical driving. In the spectrum, the combination of Mollow triplet physics and phonon sidebands results in a complex structure of crossings, anti-crossings, and line suppressions. We apply Floquet theory to develop an analytical expression for the RF spectrum. Complemented with perturbative and non-perturbative techniques, this allows us to fully understand the underlying acousto-optical double dressing physics of the hybrid quantum system, explaining the observed spectral features. We use these insights to perform an experimental feasibility study of existing emitter-based acousto-optical platforms and come to the conclusion that surface and bulk acoustic waves interfaced with quantum dots as an established Mollow triplet platform represent particularly promising infrastructures for acousto-optical Floquet engineering.