Optically driving the radiative Auger transition

Abstract: In a radiative Auger process, optical decay is accompanied by simultaneous excitation of other carriers. The radiative Auger process gives rise to weak red-shifted satellite peaks in the optical emission spectrum. These satellite peaks have been observed over a large spectral range: in the X-ray emission of atoms; close to visible frequencies on donors in semiconductors and quantum emitters; and at infrared frequencies as shake-up lines in two-dimensional systems. So far, all the work on the radiative Auger process has focussed on detecting the spontaneous emission. However, the fact that the radiative Auger process leads to photon emission suggests that the transition can also be optically excited. In such an inverted radiative Auger process, excitation would correspond to simultaneous photon absorption and electronic de-excitation. Here, we demonstrate optical driving of the radiative Auger transition on a trion in a semiconductor quantum dot. The radiative Auger and the fundamental transition together form a $\Lambda$-system. On driving both transitions of this $\Lambda$-system simultaneously, we observe a reduction of the fluorescence signal by up to $70\%$. Our results demonstrate a type of optically addressable transition connecting few-body Coulomb interactions to quantum optics. The results open up the possibility of carrying out THz spectroscopy on single quantum emitters with all the benefits of optics: coherent laser sources, efficient and fast single-photon detectors. In analogy to optical control of an electron spin, the $\Lambda$-system between the radiative Auger and the fundamental transitions allows optical control of the emitters' orbital degree of freedom.