Tunneling-induced phase grating in quantum dot molecules.

We present an alternative scheme for the preparation of the phase grating in quantum-dot molecules, where the tunnel coupling occurs between two quantum dots. In the presence of interdot tunneling, the nonlinear dispersion can be significantly enhanced with nearly vanishing linear and nonlinear absorption due to the tunneling-induced quantum coherence. With the help of a standing-wave control field, the weak probe light could be diffracted into high-order direction. It is shown that parameters such as the weak-driving intensity, driving detuning, tunneling strength, and interaction length could be used to adjust the diffraction intensity effectively. Our scheme is focused on the weak standing-wave driving and weak tunneling strength, which may provide an easy and actual way to obtain the phase grating and may have potential applications in quantum-optics and quantum-information-processing devices in the solid-state system.