Ultrafast control of spontaneous emission using all-optical switching of micropillar cavities

Micropillar cavities are versatile nanophotonic structures that locally enhance the light-matter interaction due to their high Q-factors, low mode volumes. Moreover, they have a consistent clean free space optical interface. These qualities have facilitated the successful application of micropillar cavities as efficient single photon sources and for cavity QED strong coupling [1]. In all these realizations, however, the cavity resonance is stationary in time during the lifetime of the embedded quantum dots. We propose to bring micropillars into a new dynamic regime where the cavity resonance is switched on a time scale faster than the emitter lifetime. To this aim we have studied the emission intensity for quantum dots with a time dependent decay rate [2] and have performed an experimental investigation of the ultrafast dynamics of switched micropillar cavities.