Influence of electron-acoustic phonon scattering on off-resonant cavity feeding within a strongly coupled quantum-dot cavity system

We present a quantum optics approach to describe the influence of electron-acoustic phonon coupling on the emission spectra of a strongly coupled quantum-dot cavity system. Using a canonical Hamiltonian for light quantization and a photon Green function formalism, phonons are included to all orders through the quantum-dot polarizability function obtained within the independent boson model. We derive simple user-friendly analytical expressions for the linear quantum light spectrum, including the influence from both exciton- and cavity-emission decay channels. In the regime of semiconductor cavity QED, we study cavity emission for various exciton-cavity detunings and demonstrate rich spectral asymmetries as well as cavity-mode suppression and enhancement effects. Our technique is nonperturbative and non-Markovian, and can be applied to study photon emission from a wide range of semiconductor quantum-dot structures, including waveguides and coupled cavity arrays. We compare our theory directly to recent and apparently puzzling experimental data for a single site-controlled quantum dot in a photonic crystal cavity and show good agreement as a function of cavity-dot detuning and as a function of temperature.