No Arabic abstract
We present the main features of a home-built scanning tunneling microscope that has been attached to the mixing chamber of a dilution refrigerator. It allows scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy measurements down to the base temperature of the cryostat, T approx. 30mK, and in applied magnetic fields up to 13T. The topography of both highly-ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) and the dichalcogenide superconductor NbSe2 have been imaged with atomic resolution down to T approx. 50mK as determined from a resistance thermometer adjacent to the sample. As a test for a successful operation in magnetic fields, the flux-line lattice of superconducting NbSe2 in low magnetic fields has been studied. The lattice constant of the Abrikosov lattice shows the expected field dependence B^{-0.5} and measurements in the STS mode clearly show the superconductive density of states with Andreev bound states in the vortex core.
We constructed a dilution-refrigerator (DR) based ultra-low temperature scanning tunneling microscope (ULT-STM) which works at temperatures down to 30 mK, in magnetic fields up to 6 T and in ultrahigh vacuum (UHV). Besides these extreme operation conditions, this STM has several unique features not available in other DR based ULT-STMs. One can load STM tips as well as samples with clean surfaces prepared in a UHV environment to an STM head keeping low temperature and UHV conditions. After then, the system can be cooled back to near the base temperature within 3 hours. Due to these capabilities, it has a variety of applications not only for cleavable materials but also for almost all conducting materials. The present ULT-STM has also an exceptionally high stability in the presence of magnetic field and even during field sweep. We describe details of its design, performance and applications for low temperature physics.
We have developed a system for tapered fiber measurements of optomechanical resonators inside a dilution refrigerator, which is compatible with both on- and off-chip devices. Our apparatus features full three-dimensional control of the taper-resonator coupling conditions enabling critical coupling, with an overall fiber transmission efficiency of up to 70%. Notably, our design incorporates an optical microscope system consisting of a coherent bundle of 37,000 optical fibers for real-time imaging of the experiment at a resolution of $sim$1 $mu$m. We present cryogenic optical and optomechanical measurements of resonators coupled to tapered fibers at temperatures as low as 9 mK.
Using low-temperature high-magnetic-field scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy (STM/STS), we systematically study a graphene quantum dot (GQD) defined by a circular graphene p-p junction. Inside the GQD, we observe a series of quasi-bound states arising from whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) confinement of the circular junction and directly visualize these quasi-bound states down to atomic dimensions. By applying a strong magnetic field, a large jump in energy of the quasi-bound states, which is about one-half the energy spacing between the quasi-bound states, is observed. Such a behavior results from turning on a {pi} Berry phase of massless Dirac fermions in graphene by a magnetic field. Moreover, our experiment demonstrates that a quasi-bound state splits into two peaks with an energy separation of about 26 meV when the Fermi level crosses the quasi-bound state, indicating that there are strong electron-electron interactions in the GQD.
Combining electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) with scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) enables detailed insight into the interactions and magnetic properties of single atoms on surfaces. A requirement for EPR-STM is the efficient coupling of microwave excitations to the tunnel junction. Here, we achieve a coupling efficiency of the order of unity by using a radiofrequency antenna placed parallel to the STM tip, which we interpret using a simple capacitive-coupling model. We further demonstrate the possibility to perform EPR-STM routinely above 4 K using amplitude as well as frequency modulation of the radiofrequency excitation. We directly compare different acquisition modes on hydrogenated Ti atoms and highlight the advantages of frequency and magnetic field sweeps as well as amplitude and frequency modulation in order to maximize the EPR signal. The possibility to tune the microwave-excitation scheme and to perform EPR-STM at relatively high temperature and high power opens this technique to a broad range of experiments, ranging from pulsed EPR spectroscopy to coherent spin manipulation of single atom ensembles.
We describe the design, construction, and performance of an ultra-high vacuum (UHV) scanning tunneling microscope (STM) capable of imaging at dilution-refrigerator temperatures and equipped with a vector magnet. The primary objective of our design is to achieve a high level of modularity by partitioning the STM system into a set of easily separable, interchangeable components. This naturally segregates the UHV needs of STM instrumentation from the typically non-UHV construction of a dilution refrigerator, facilitating the usage of non-UHV materials while maintaining a fully bakeable UHV chamber that houses the STM. The modular design also permits speedy removal of the microscope head from the rest of the system, allowing for repairs, modifications, and even replacement of the entire microscope head to be made at any time without warming the cryostat or compromising the vacuum. Without using cryogenic filters, we measured an electron temperature of 184 mK on a superconducting Al(100) single crystal.