No Arabic abstract
Coulomb interactions play an essential role in atomically-thin materials. On one hand, they are strong and long-ranged in layered systems due to the lack of environmental screening. On the other hand, they can be efficiently tuned by means of surrounding dielectric materials. Thus all physical properties which decisively depend on the exact structure of the electronic interactions can be in principle efficiently controlled and manipulated from the outside via Coulomb engineering. Here, we show how this concept can be used to create fundamentally new plasmonic waveguides in metallic layered materials. We discuss in detail how dielectrically structured environments can be utilized to non-invasively confine plasmonic excitations in an otherwise homogeneous metallic 2D system by modification of its many-body interactions. We define optimal energy ranges for this mechanism and demonstrate plasmonic confinement within several nanometers. In contrast to conventional functionalization mechanisms, this scheme relies on a purely many-body concept and does not involve any direct modifications to the active material itself.
We report the observation of the generation and routing of single plasmons generated by localized excitons in a WSe$_2$ monolayer flake exfoliated onto lithographically defined Au-plasmonic waveguides. Statistical analysis of the position of different quantum emitters shows that they are $(3.3 pm 0.7)times$ more likely to form close to the edges of the plasmonic waveguides. By characterizing individual emitters we confirm their single-photon character via the observation of antibunching of the signal ($g^{(2)}(0) = 0.42$) and demonstrate that specific emitters couple to the modes of the proximal plasmonic waveguide. Time-resolved measurements performed on emitters close to, and far away from the plasmonic nanostructures indicate that Purcell factors up to $15 pm 3$ occur, depending on the precise location of the quantum emitter relative to the tightly confined plasmonic mode. Measurement of the point spread function of five quantum emitters relative to the waveguide with <50nm precision are compared with numerical simulations to demonstrate potential for higher increases of the coupling efficiency for ideally positioned emitters. The integration of such strain-induced quantum emitters with deterministic plasmonic routing is a step toward deep-subwavelength on-chip single quantum light sources.
We have calculated the exchange-energy contribution to the total energy of quasi-two-dimensional hole systems realized by a hard-wall quantum-well confinement of valence-band states in typical semiconductors. The magnitude of the exchange energy turns out to be suppressed from the value expected for analogous conduction-band systems whenever the mixing between heavy-hole and light-hole components is strong. Our results are obtained using a very general formalism for calculating the exchange energy of many-particle systems where single-particle states are spinors. We have applied this formalism to obtain analytical results for spin-3/2 hole systems in limiting cases.
The suite of highly confined polaritons supported by two-dimensional (2D) materials constitutes a versatile platform for nano-optics, offering the means to channel light on deep-subwavelength scales. Graphene, in particular, has attracted considerable interest due to its ability to support long-lived plasmons that can be actively tuned via electrical gating. While the excellent optoelectronic properties of graphene are widely exploited in plasmonics, its mechanical flexibility remains relatively underexplored in the same context. Here, we present a semi-analytical formalism to describe plasmons and other polaritons supported in waveguides formed by bending a 2D material into a parabolic shape. Specifically, for graphene parabolas, our theory reveals that the already large field confinement associated with graphene plasmons can be substantially increased by bending an otherwise flat graphene sheet into a parabola shape, thereby forming a plasmonic waveguide without introducing potentially lossy edge terminations via patterning. Further, we show that the high field confinement associated with such channel polaritons in 2D parabolic waveguides can enhance the spontaneous emission rate of a quantum emitter near the parabola vertex. Our findings apply generally to 2D polaritons in atomically thin materials deposited onto grooves or wedges prepared on a substrate or freely suspended in a quasi-parabolic (catenary) shape. We envision that both the optoelectronic and mechanical flexibility of 2D materials can be harnessed in tandem to produce 2D channel polaritons with versatile properties that can be applied to a wide range of nano-optics functionalities, including subwavelength polaritonic circuitry and bright single-photon sources.
Superconducting triangular Nb wire networks with high normal-state resistance are fabricated by using a negative tone hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ) resist. Robust magnetoresistance oscillations are observed up to high magnetic fields and maintained at low temperatures, due to the eective reduction of wire dimensions. Well-defined dips appear at integral and rational values (1/2, 1/3, 1/4) of the reduced flux f = Phi/Phi_0, which is the first observation in the triangular wire networks. These results are well consistent with theoretical calculations for the reduced critical temperature as a function of f.
We report experimental and theoretical evidence of strong electron-plasmon interaction in n-doped single-layer MoS2. Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) measurements reveal the emergence of distinctive signatures of polaronic coupling in the electron spectral function. Calculations based on many-body perturbation theory illustrate that electronic coupling to two-dimensional (2D) carrier plasmons provides an exhaustive explanation of the experimental spectral features and their energies. These results constitute compelling evidence of the formation of plasmon-induced polaronic quasiparticles, suggesting that highly-doped transition-metal dichalcogenides may provide a new platform to explore strong-coupling phenomena between electrons and plasmons in 2D.