The interplay between electron tunneling and Auger emission in a single quantum emitter weakly coupled to an electron reservoir.

In quantum dots (QDs), the Auger recombination is a non-radiative scattering process in which the optical transition energy of a charged exciton (trion) is transferred to an additional electron leaving the dot. Electron tunneling from a reservoir is the competing process that replenishes the QD with an electron again. Here, we study the dependence of the tunneling and Auger recombination rate on the applied electric field using high-resolution time-resolved resonance fluorescence (RF) measurements. With the given p–i–n diode structure and a tunnel barrier between the electron reservoir and the QD of 45 nm, we measured a tunneling rate into the QD in the order of ms−1. This rate shows a strong decrease by almost an order of magnitude for decreasing electric field, while the Auger emission rate decreases by a factor of five in the same voltage range. Furthermore, we study in detail the influence of the Auger recombination and the tunneling rate from the charge reservoir into the QD on the intensity and linewidth of the trion transition. In addition to the well-known quenching of the trion transition, we observe in our time-resolved RF measurements a strong influence of the tunneling rate on the observed linewidth. The steady-state RF measurement yields a broadened trion transition of about 1.5 GHz for an Auger emission rate of the same order as the electron tunneling rate. In a non-equilibrium measurement, the Auger recombination can be suppressed, and a more than four times smaller linewidth of 340 MHz (1.4 μeV) is measured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]