Two-Photon Blockade in an Atom-Driven Cavity QED System.

Photon blockade is a dynamical quantum-nonlinear effect in driven systems with an anharmonic energy ladder. For a single atom strongly coupled to an optical cavity, we show that atom driving gives a decisively larger optical nonlinearity than cavity driving. This enhances single-photon blockade and allows for the implementation of two-photon blockade where the absorption of two photons suppresses the absorption of further photons.

Photonic crystal disk lasers.

A novel type of nanolasers, which combines the advantages of photonic crystal lasers and microdisk lasers, has been demonstrated based on InAlGaAs/InGaAs quantum wells using pulsed optical pumping at room temperature. It incorporates the properties of small footprint, small mode volume, and submilliwatt threshold, and favors vertical emission. We believe that this type of laser acts as a promising candidate for highly-integrated on-chip nanolasers in applications for signal processing and index sensing.

Synthesis of few-layer hexagonal boron nitride thin film by chemical vapor deposition.

In this contribution we demonstrate a method of synthesizing a hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) thin film by ambient pressure chemical vapor deposition on polycrystalline Ni films. Depending on the growth conditions, the thickness of the obtained h-BN film is between ∼5 and 50 nm. The h-BN grows continuously on the entire Ni surface and the region with uniform thickness can be up to 20 μm in lateral size which is only limited by the size of the Ni single crystal grains.