No Arabic abstract
Unique optical properties of colloidal semiconductor quantum dots (QDs), arising from quantum mechanical confinement of charge within these structures, present a versatile testbed for the study of how high electric fields affect the electronic structure of nanostructured solids. Earlier studies of quasi-DC electric field modulation of QD properties have been limited by the electrostatic breakdown processes under the high externally applied electric fields, which have restricted the range of modulation of QD properties. In contrast, in the present work we drive CdSe:CdS core:shell QD films with high-field THz-frequency electromagnetic pulses whose duration is only a few picoseconds. Surprisingly, in response to the THz excitation we observe QD luminescence even in the absence of an external charge source. Our experiments show that QD luminescence is associated with a remarkably high and rapid modulation of the QD band-gap, which is changing by more than 0.5 eV (corresponding to 25% of the unperturbed bandgap energy) within the picosecond timeframe of THz field profile. We show that these colossal energy shifts can be consistently explained by the quantum confined Stark effect. Our work demonstrates a route to extreme modulation of material properties without configurational changes in material sets or geometries. Additionally, we expect that this platform can be adapted to a novel compact THz detection scheme where conversion of THz fields (with meV-scale photon energies) to the visible/near-IR band (with eV-scale photon energies) can be achieved at room temperature with high bandwidth and sensitivity.
We show that two initially non-resonant quantum dots may be brought into resonance by the application of a single detuned laser. This allows for control of the inter-dot interactions and the generation of highly entangled excitonic states on the picosecond timescale. Along with arbitrary single qubit manipulations, this system would be sufficient for the demonstration of a prototype excitonic quantum computer.
We describe how complex fluctuations of the local environment of an optically active quantum dot can leave rich fingerprints in its emission spectrum. A new feature, termed Fluctuation Induced Luminescence (FIL), is observed to arise from extremely rare fluctuation events that have a dramatic impact on the response of the system-so called black swan events. A quantum dissipative master equation formalism is developed to describe this effect phenomenologically. Experiments performed on single quantum dots subject to electrical noise show excellent agreement with our theory, producing the characteristic FIL sidebands.
Engineering an array of precisely located cavity-coupled active media poses a major experimental challenge in the field of hybrid integrated photonics. We deterministically position solution processed colloidal quantum dots (QDs) on high quality-factor silicon nitride nanobeam cavities and demonstrate light-matter coupling. By lithographically defining a window on top of an encapsulated cavity that is cladded in a polymer resist, and spin coating QD solution, we can precisely control the placement of the QDs, which subsequently couple to the cavity. We show that the number of QDs coupled to the cavity can be controlled by the size of the window. Furthermore, we demonstrate Purcell enhancement and saturable photoluminescence in this QD-cavity platform. Finally, we deterministically position QDs on a photonic molecule and observe QD-coupled cavity super-modes. Our results pave the way for controlling the number of QDs coupled to a cavity by engineering the window size, and the QD dimension, and will allow advanced studies in cavity enhanced single photon emission, ultralow power nonlinear optics, and quantum many-body simulations with interacting photons.
In this work we develop a simple theory for the green photoluminescence of ZnO quantum dots (QDs) that allows us to understand and rationalize several experimental findings on fundamental grounds. We calculate the spectrum of light emitted in the radiative recombination of a conduction band electron with a deeply trapped hole and find that the experimental behavior of this emission band with particle size can be understood in terms of quantum size effects of the electronic states and their overlap with the deep hole.We focus the comparison of our results on detailed experiments performed for colloidal ZnO nanoparticles in ethanol and find that the experimental evolution of the luminescent signal with particle sizeat room temperature can be better reproduced by assuming the deep hole to be localized at the surface of the nanoparticles. However, the experimental behavior of the intensity and decay time of the signal with temperature can be rationalized in terms of holes predominantly trapped near the center of the nanoparticles at low temperatures being transferred to surface defects at room temperature. Furthermore, the calculated values of the radiative lifetimes are comparable to the experimental values of the decay time of the visible emission signal.We also study the visible emission band as a function of the number of electrons in the conduction band of the nanoparticle, finding a pronounced dependence of the radiative lifetime but a weak dependence of energetic position of the maximum intensity.
Femtosecond electron bunches with keV energies and eV energy spread are needed by condensed matter physicists to resolve state transitions in carbon nanotubes, molecular structures, organic salts, and charge density wave materials. These semirelativistic electron sources are not only of interest for ultrafast electron diffraction, but also for electron energy-loss spectroscopy and as a seed for x-ray FELs. Thus far, the output energy spread (hence pulse duration) of ultrafast electron guns has been limited by the achievable electric field at the surface of the emitter, which is 10 MV/m for DC guns and 200 MV/m for RF guns. A single-cycle THz electron gun provides a unique opportunity to not only achieve GV/m surface electric fields but also with relatively low THz pulse energies, since a single-cycle transform-limited waveform is the most efficient way to achieve intense electric fields. Here, electron bunches of 50 fC from a flat copper photocathode are accelerated from rest to tens of eV by a microjoule THz pulse with peak electric field of 72 MV/m at 1 kHz repetition rate. We show that scaling to the readily-available GV/m THz field regime would translate to monoenergetic electron beams of ~100 keV.