Cross-Polarization-Extinction Enhancement and Spin-Orbit Coupling of Light for Quantum-Dot Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics Spectroscopy

Resonant laser spectroscopy is essential for the characterization, operation, and manipulation of singlequantum systems such as semiconductor quantum dots. The separation of the weak resonance fluorescence from the excitation laser is key for high-quality single- and entangled-photon sources. This is often achieved by cross-polarization laser extinction, which is limited by the quality of the optical elements. Recently, it was discovered that Fresnel-reflection birefringence in combination with single-mode filtering counteracting spin-orbit-coupling effects enables a three-order-of-magnitude improvement of polarization extinction [Benelajla et al., Phys. Rev. X 11, 021007 (2021)]. Here, we demonstrate this method for cross-polarization-extinction enhancement in cryogenic confocal microscopy of a resonantly excited semiconductor quantum dot in a birefringent optical microcavity, and observe a 10x improvement of the single-photon contrast.