The damping of quantum effects in the transport properties of electrons deposited on a surface of liquid helium is studied. It is found that due to vertical motion of the helium vapour atoms the interference of paths of duration $t$ is damped by a factor $exp - (t/tau_v)^3$. An expression is derived for the weak-localization lineshape in the case that damping occurs by a combination of processes with this type of cubic exponential damping and processes with a simple exponential damping factor.
An ultra-strong photovoltaic effect has recently been reported for electrons trapped on a liquid Helium surface under a microwave excitation tuned at intersubband resonance [D. Konstantinov et. al. : J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 81, 093601 (2012) ]. In this article, we analyze theoretically the redistribution of the electron density induced by an overheating of the surface electrons under irradiation, and obtain quantitative predictions for the photocurrent dependence on the effective electron temperature and confinement voltages. We show that the photo-current can change sign as a function of the parameters of the electrostatic confinement potential on the surface, while the photocurrent measurements reported so far have been performed only at a fixed confinement potential. The experimental observation of this sign reversal could provide a reliable estimation of the electron effective temperature in this new out of equilibrium state. Finally, we have also considered the effect of the temperature on the outcome of capacitive transport measurement techniques. These investigations led us to develop, numerical and analytical methods for solving the Poisson-Boltzmann equation in the limit of very low temperatures which could be useful for other systems.
We report on an unconventional $macroscopic$ field effect transistor composed of electrons floating above the surface of superfluid helium. With this device unique transport regimes are realized in which the charge density of the electron layer can be controlled in a manner not possible in other material systems. In particular, we are able to manipulate the collective behavior of the electrons to produce a highly non-uniform, but precisely controlled, charge density to reveal a negative source-drain current. This behavior can be understood by considering the propagation of damped charge oscillations along a transmission line formed by the inhomogeneous sheet of two-dimensional electrons above, and between, the source and drain electrodes of the transistor.
Electrons on the liquid helium surface form an extremely clean two dimensional system where different plasmon-excitations can coexist. Under a magnetic field time reversal symmetry is broken and all the bulk magneto-plasmons become gaped at frequencies below cyclotron resonance while chiral one dimensional edge magneto-plasmons appear at the system perimeter. We theoretically show that the presence of a homogeneous density gradient in the electron gas leads to the formation of a delocalized magneto-plasmon mode in the same frequency range as the lowest frequency edge-magnetoplasmon mode. We experimentally confirm its existence by measuring the corresponding resonance peak in frequency dependence of the admittance of the electron gas. This allows to realize a prototype system to investigate the coupling between a chiral one-dimensional mode and a single delocalized bulk mode. Such a model system can be important for the understanding of transport properties of topological materials where states of different dimensionality can coexist.
The quantized lateral motional states and the spin states of electrons trapped on the surface of superfluid helium have been proposed as basic building blocks of a scalable quantum computer. Circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) allows strong dipole coupling between electrons and a high-Q superconducting microwave resonator, enabling such sensitive detection and manipulation of electron degrees of freedom. Here we present the first realization of a hybrid circuit in which a large number of electrons are trapped on the surface of superfluid helium inside a coplanar waveguide resonator. The high finesse of the resonator allows us to observe large dispersive shifts that are many times the linewidth and make fast and sensitive measurements on the collective vibrational modes of the electron ensemble, as well as the superfluid helium film underneath. Furthermore, a large ensemble coupling is observed in the dispersive regime during experiment, and it shows excellent agreement with our numeric model. The coupling strength of the ensemble to the cavity is found to be >1 MHz per electron, indicating the feasibility of achieving single electron strong coupling.
We investigate the coupling between Rydberg states of electrons trapped on a liquid Helium surface and Landau levels induced by a perpendicular magnetic field. We show that this realises a prototype quantum system equivalent to an atom in a cavity, where their coupling strength can be tuned by a parallel magnetic field. We determine experimentally the renormalisation of the atomic transition energies induced by the coupling to the cavity, which can be seen as an analogue of the Lamb shift. When the coupling is sufficiently strong the transition between the ground and first excited Rydberg states splits into two resonances corresponding to dressed states with vacuum and one photon in the cavity. Our results are in quantitative agreement with the energy shifts predicted by the effective atom in a cavity model where all parameters are known with high accuracy.