A single-photon emitter coupled to a phononic-crystal resonator in the resolved-sideband regime

A promising route towards the deterministic creation and annihilation of single-phonons is to couple a single-photon emitter to a mechanical resonator. The challenge lies in reaching the resolved-sideband regime with a large coupling rate and a high mechanical quality factor. We achieve this by coupling self-assembled InAs quantum dots to a small mode-volume phononic-crystal resonator with mechanical frequency Ω m /2 π = 1.466 GHz and quality factor Q m = 2.1 × 10 3 . Thanks to the high coupling rate of g ep /2 π = 2.9 MHz, and by exploiting a matching condition between the effective Rabi and mechanical frequencies, we observe the interaction between the two systems via correlations in the emitted photons. Our results represent a major step towards quantum control of the mechanical resonator via a single-photon emitter. Coupling a single-photon emitter to a mechanical resonator enables the generation of single phonons. Here, the authors study the interaction of a single-photon emitter and a phononic-crystal resonator in the sideband-resolved regime.