No Arabic abstract
Acoustic vibrations at the nanoscale (GHz-THz frequencies) and their interactions with electrons, photons and other excitations are the heart of an emerging field in physics: nanophononics. The design of ultrahigh frequency acoustic-phonon transducers, with tunable frequency, and easy to integrate in complex systems is still an open and challenging problem for the development of acoustic nanoscopies and phonon lasers. Here we show how an optimized plasmonic metasurface can act as a high-frequency phonon transducer. We report pump-probe experiments in metasurfaces composed of an array of gold nanostructures, revealing that such arrays can act as efficient and tunable photon-phonon transducers, with a strong spectral dependence on the excitation rate and laser polarization. We anticipate our work to be the starting point for the engineering of phononic metasurfaces based on plasmonic nanostructures.
The authors combine acousto-optoelectric and multi-channel photon correlation spectroscopy to probe spatio-temporal carrier dynamics induced by a piezoelectric surface acoustic wave (SAW). The technique is implemented by combining phase-locked optical micro-photoluminescence spectroscopy and simultaneous three-channel time resolved detection. From the recorded time correlated single photon counting data the time transients of individual channels and the second and third order correlation functions are obtained with sub-nanosecond resolution. The method is validated by probing the correlations SAW-driven carrier dynamics between three decay channels of a single polytypic semiconductor nanowire on a conventional LiNbO$_mathrm{3}$ SAW delay line chip. The method can be readily applied to other types of nanosystems and probe SAW-regulated charge state preparation in quantum dots, charge transfer processes in van der Waals heterostructures or other types of hybrid nanoarchitectures.
Nonlinear metasurfaces offer new paradigm for boosting optical effect beyond limitations of conventional materials. In this work, we present an alternative way to produce pronounced third-harmonic generation (THG) based on nonlinear field resonances rather than linear field enhancement, which is a typical strategy for achieving strong nonlinear response. By designing and studying a nonlinear plasmonic-graphene metasurface at terahertz regime with hybrid guided modes and bound states in the continuum modes, it is found that a THG with a narrow bandwidth can be observed, thanks to the strong resonance between generated weak THG field and these modes. Such strong nonlinear field resonance greatly enhances the photon-photon interactions, thus resulting in a large effective nonlinear coefficient of the whole system. This finding provides new opportunity for studying nonlinear optical metasurfaces.
We have investigated the polarization dependence of the generation and detection of radial breathing mode (RBM) coherent phonons (CP) in highly-aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes. Using polarization-dependent pump-probe differential-transmission spectroscopy, we measured RBM CPs as a function of angle for two different geometries. In Type I geometry, the pump and probe polarizations were fixed, and the sample orientation was rotated, whereas, in Type II geometry, the probe polarization and sample orientation were fixed, and the pump polarization was rotated. In both geometries, we observed a very nearly complete quenching of the RBM CPs when the pump polarization was perpendicular to the nanotubes. For both Type I and II geometries, we have developed a microscopic theoretical model to simulate CP generation and detection as a function of polarization angle and found that the CP signal decreases as the angle goes from 0 degrees (parallel to the tube) to 90 degrees (perpendicular to the tube). We compare theory with experiment in detail for RBM CPs created by pumping at the E44 optical transition in an ensemble of single-walled carbon nanotubes with a diameter distribution centered around 3 nm, taking into account realistic band structure and imperfect nanotube alignment in the sample.
Nonlinear topological photonic and phononic systems have recently aroused intense interests in exploring new phenomena that have no counterparts in electronic systems. The squeezed bosonic interaction in these systems is particularly interesting, because it can modify the vacuum fluctuations of topological states, drive them into instabilities, and lead to topological parametric lasers. However, these phenomena remain experimentally elusive because of limited nonlinearities in most existing topological bosonic systems. Here, we experimentally realized topological parametric lasers based on nonlinear nanoelectromechanical Dirac-vortex cavities with strong squeezed interaction. Specifically, we parametrically drove the Dirac-vortex cavities to provide phase-sensitive amplification for topological phonons, and observed phonon lasing above the threshold. Additionally, we confirmed that the lasing frequency is robust against fabrication disorders and that the free spectral range defies the universal inverse scaling law with increased cavity size, which benefit the realization of large-area single-mode lasers. Our results represent an important advance in experimental investigations of topological physics with large bosonic nonlinearities and parametric gain.
Integrating and manipulating the nano-optoelectronic properties of Van der Waals heterostructures can enable unprecedented platforms for photodetection and sensing. The main challenge of infrared photodetectors is to funnel the light into a small nanoscale active area and efficiently convert it into an electrical signal. Here, we overcome all of those challenges in one device, by efficient coupling of a plasmonic antenna to hyperbolic phonon-polaritons in hexagonal-BN to highly concentrate mid-infrared light into a graphene pn-junction. We balance the interplay of the absorption, electrical and thermal conductivity of graphene via the device geometry. This novel approach yields remarkable device performance featuring room temperature high sensitivity (NEP of 82 pW-per-square-root-Hz) and fast rise time of 17 nanoseconds (setup-limited), among others, hence achieving a combination currently not present in the state-of-the-art graphene and commercial mid-infrared detectors. We also develop a multiphysics model that shows excellent quantitative agreement with our experimental results and reveals the different contributions to our photoresponse, thus paving the way for further improvement of these types of photodetectors even beyond mid-infrared range.