There exists a growing interest in the properties of the light generated by hybrid systems involving a mesoscopic number of emitters as a means of providing macroscopic quantum light sources. In this work, the quantum correlations of the light emitted by a collection of emitters coupled to a generic optical cavity are studied theoretically using an effective Hamiltonian approach. Starting from the single-emitter level, we analyze the persistence of photon antibunching as the ensemble size increases. Not only is the photon blockade effect identifiable, but photon antibunching originated from destructive interference processes, the so-called unconventional antibunching, is also present. We study the dependence of these two types of negative correlations on the spectral detuning between cavity and emitters, as well as its evolution as the time delay between photon detections increases. Throughout this work, the performance of plasmonic nanocavities and dielectric microcavities is compared: despite the distinct energy scales and the differences introduced by their respectively open and closed character, the bunching and antibunching phenomenology presents remarkable similarities in both types of cavities.

• Received 20 December 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.98.013839