No Arabic abstract
Phonons are produced when an excited vacancy in cuprous oxide (Cu$_2$O) relaxes. Time resolved luminescence was used to find the excited copper vacancy (acceptor) and oxygen vacancy (donor) trap levels and lifetimes. It was also used to determine the typical energy and number of phonons in the phonon pulses emitted by vacancies. The vacancy properties of cuprous oxide are controlled by several synthesis parameters and by the temperature. We directly demonstrate the absorption of light by oxygen vacancies with transient absorption. Copper and oxygen vacancies behave differently, in part because the two kinds of traps capture carriers from different states. For example, the copper vacancy luminescence lifetime is around 25 times greater at low temperature. However, both kinds of vacancy luminescence are consistent with a Poissonian multiple phonon emission model.
High-lying Rydberg states of Mott-Wannier excitons are receiving considerable interest due to the possibility of adding long-range interactions to the physics of exciton-polaritons. Here, we study Rydberg excitation in bulk synthetic cuprous oxide grown by the optical float zone technique and compare the result with natural samples. X-ray characterization confirms both materials are mostly single crystal, and mid-infrared transmission spectroscopy revealed little difference between synthetic and natural material. The synthetic samples show principal quantum numbers up to $n=10$, exhibit additional absorption lines, plus enhanced spatial broadening and spatial inhomogeneity. Room temperature and cryogenic photoluminescence measurements reveal a significant excess of copper vacancies in the synthetic material. These measurements provide a route towards achieving mbox{high-$n$} excitons in synthetic crystals, opening a route to scalable quantum devices.
Pulsed NQR at the frequencies of 28-33 MHz has been used to study copper NQR spectra in YBa{2}Cu{3}O{7}, TmBa{2}Cu{3}O{7} and Y{0.9}Pr{0.1}Ba{2}Cu{3}O{7} compounds at temperatures of 4.2-200K. Quantitative analysis of the spectra has shown that the plane Cu(2) spectra shape is well described by using a model of 1D correlations of charge and spin distribution in CuO{2} planes (stripe correlations). In the undoped superconductors the charge-spin stripe structure moves fast in the CuO{2} planes, but doping the YBa{2}Cu{3}O{7} lattice with praseodymium slows this motion down.
The intragrain pinning in high-$T_c$ superconductor compounds Y$_{1-x}$RE$_{x}$Ba$_{2}$Cu$_{3}$O$_{7-delta}$ with low concentration of RE (La, Ce, Pr) was investigated. Magnetic and transport measurements reveal that the pinning is maximal for the concentration of heterovalent RE such that the average distance between the impurity ions in the plane of rare-earth elements close to the diameter of Abrikosov vortices in YBCO.
The structure and dehydration mechanism of the proton conducting oxide Ba$_{2}$In$_{2}$O$_{5}$(H$_{2}$O)$_{x}$ are investigated by means of variable temperature Raman spectroscopy together with inelastic neutron scattering. At room temperature, Ba$_{2}$In$_{2}$O$_{5}$(H$_{2}$O)$_{x}$ is found to be fully hydrated ($x=1$) and to have a perovskite-like structure, which dehydrates gradually with increasing temperature and at around 600 $^{circ}$C the material is essentially completely dehydrated ($x=0$). The dehydrated material exhibits a brownmillerite structure, which is featured by alternating layers of InO$_{6}$ octahedra and InO$_{4}$ tetrahedra. The transition from a perovskite-like to a brownmillerite-like structure is featured by a hydrated-to-intermediate phase transition at $ca.$ 370 {deg}C. The structure of the intermediate phase is similar to the structure of the fully dehydrated material, but with the difference that it exhibits a non-centrosymmetric distortion of the InO$_{6}$ octahedra not present in the latter. For temperatures below the hydrated-to-intermediate phase transition, dehydration is featured by the release of protons confined to the layers of InO$_{4}$ tetrahedra, whereas above the transition also protons bound to oxygens of the layers of InO$_{6}$ are released. Finally, we found that the O-H stretch region of the vibrational spectra is not consistent with a single-phase spectrum, but is in agreement with the superposition of spectra associated with two different proton configurations. The relative contributions of the two proton configurations depend on how the sample is hydrated.
We report measurements of the attenuation of a beam of orthoexciton-polaritons by a photoionizing optical probe. Excitons were prepared in a narrow resonance by two photon absorption of a 1.016 eV, 54 ps pulsed light source in cuprous oxide (Cu2O) at 1.4 K. A collinear, 1.165 eV, 54 ps probe delayed by 119 ps was used to measure the photoionization cross section of the excitons. Two photon absorption is quadratic with respect to the intensity of the pump and leads to polariton formation. Ionization is linear with respect to the intensity of the probe. Subsequent carrier recombination is quadratic with respect to the intenisty of the probe, and is distinguished because it shifts the exciton momentum away from the polariton anticrossing; the photoionizing probe leads to a rise in phonon-linked luminescence in addition to the attenuation of polaritons. The evolution of the exciton density was determined by variably delaying the probe pulse. Using the probe irradiance and the reduction in the transmitted polariton light, a cross section of 3.9*10^(-22) m^2 was deduced for the probe frequency.