The photon blockade (PB) effect in emitter-cavity systems depends on the anharmonicity of the ladder of dressed energy eigenstates. The recent developments in color center photonics are leading toward experimental demonstrations of multiemitter-cavity solid-state systems with an expanded set of energy levels compared to the traditionally studied single-emitter systems. We focus on the case of $N=2$ nonidentical quasiatoms strongly coupled to a nanocavity in the bad cavity regime (with parameters within reach of the color center systems), and discover three PB mechanisms: polaritonic, subradiant, and unconventional. The polaritonic PB, which is the conventional mechanism studied in single-emitter-cavity systems, also occurs at the polariton frequencies in multiemitter systems. The subradiant PB is a new interference effect owing to the inhomogeneous broadening of the emitters which results in a purer and a more robust single-photon emission than the polaritonic PB. The unconventional PB in the modeled system corresponds to the suppression of the single- and two-photon correlation statistics and the enhancement of the three-photon correlation statistic. Using the effective Hamiltonian approach, we unravel the origin and the time-domain evolution of these phenomena.

• Received 10 December 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.96.011801