Photon propagation through dissipative Rydberg media at large input rates.

We study the dissipative propagation of quantized light in interacting Rydberg media under the conditions of electromagnetically induced transparency. Rydberg blockade physics in optically dense atomic media leads to strong dissipative interactions between single photons. The regime of high incoming photon flux constitutes a challenging many-body dissipative problem. We experimentally study in detail the pulse shapes and the second-order correlation function of the outgoing field and compare our data with simulations based on two novel theoretical approaches well-suited to treat this many-photon limit. At low incoming flux, we report good agreement between both theories and the experiment. For higher input flux, the intensity of the outgoing light is lower than that obtained from theoretical predictions. We explain this discrepancy using a simple phenomenological model taking into account pollutants, which are nearly stationary Rydberg excitations coming from the reabsorption of scattered probe photons. At high incoming photon rates, the blockade physics results in unconventional shapes of measured correlation functions.

Efficient visible luminescence of nanocrystalline silicon prepared from amorphous silicon films by thermal annealing and stain etching.

Films of nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si) were prepared from hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) by using rapid thermal annealing. The formed nc-Si films were subjected to stain etching in hydrofluoric acid solutions in order to passivate surfaces of nc-Si. The optical reflectance spectroscopy revealed the nc-Si formation as well as the high optical quality of the formed films. The Raman scattering spectroscopy was used to estimate the mean size and volume fraction of nc-Si in the annealed films, which were about 4 to 8 nm and 44 to 90%, respectively, depending on the annealing regime. In contrast to as-deposited a-Si:H films, the nc-Si films after stain etching exhibited efficient photoluminescence in the spectral range of 600 to 950 nm at room temperature. The photoluminescence intensity and lifetimes of the stain etched nc-Si films were similar to those for conventional porous Si formed by electrochemical etching. The obtained results indicate new possibilities to prepare luminescent thin films for Si-based optoelectronics.