No Arabic abstract
Exploring low-loss two-dimensional plasmon modes is considered central for achieving light manipulation at the nanoscale and applications in plasmonic science and technology. In this context, pump-probe spectroscopy is a powerful tool for investigating these collective modes and the corresponding energy transfer processes. Here, I present a first-principles study on non-equilibrium Dirac plasmon in graphene, wherein damping channels under ultrafast conditions are still not fully explored. The laser-induced blueshift of plasmon energy is explained in terms of thermal increase of the electron-hole pair concentration in the intraband channel. Interestingly, while damping pathways of the equilibrium graphene plasmon are entirely ruled by scatterings with acoustic phonons, the photoinduced plasmon predominantly transfers its energy to the strongly coupled hot optical phonons, which explains the experimentally-observed tenfold increase of the plasmon linewidth. The present study paves the way for an in-depth theoretical comprehension of plasmon temporal dynamics in novel two-dimensional systems and heterostructures.
Bilayer graphene is a highly promising material for electronic and optoelectronic applications since it is supporting massive Dirac fermions with a tuneable band gap. However, no consistent picture of the gaps effect on the optical and transport behavior has emerged so far, and it has been proposed that the insulating nature of the gap could be compromised by unavoidable structural defects, by topological in-gap states, or that the electronic structure could be altogether changed by many-body effects. Here we directly follow the excited carriers in bilayer graphene on a femtosecond time scale, using ultrafast time- and angle-resolved photoemission. We find a behavior consistent with a single-particle band gap. Compared to monolayer graphene, the existence of this band gap leads to an increased carrier lifetime in the minimum of the lowest conduction band. This is in sharp contrast to the second sub-state of the conduction band, in which the excited electrons decay through fast, phonon-assisted inter-band transitions.
Monolayer graphene provides an ideal material to explore one of the fundamental light-field driven interference effects: Landau-Zener-Stuckelberg interference. However, direct observation of the resulting interference patterns in momentum space has not proven possible, with Landau-Zener-Stuckelberg interference observed only indirectly through optically induced residual currents. Here we show that the transient electron momentum density (EMD), an object that can easily be obtained in experiment, provides an excellent description of momentum resolved charge excitation. We employ state-of-the-art time-dependent density function theory calculations, demonstrating by direct comparison of EMD with conduction band occupancy, obtained from projecting the time propagated wavefunction onto the ground state, that the two quantities are in excellent agreement. For even the most intense laser pulses we find that the electron dynamics to be almost completely dominated by the $pi$-band, with transitions to other bands strongly suppressed. Simple model based tight-binding approaches can thus be expected to provide an excellent description for the laser induced electron dynamics in graphene.
We present a theoretical study using density functional calculations of the structural, electronic and magnetic properties of 3d transition metal, noble metal and Zn atoms interacting with carbon monovacancies in graphene. We pay special attention to the electronic and magnetic properties of these substitutional impurities and found that they can be fully understood using a simple model based on the hybridization between the states of the metal atom, particularly the d shell, and the defect levels associated with an unreconstructed D3h carbon vacancy. We identify three different regimes associated with the occupation of different carbon-metal hybridized electronic levels: (i) bonding states are completely filled for Sc and Ti, and these impurities are non-magnetic; (ii) the non-bonding d shell is partially occupied for V, Cr and Mn and, correspondingly, these impurties present large and localized spin moments; (iii) antibonding states with increasing carbon character are progressively filled for Co, Ni, the noble metals and Zn. The spin moments of these impurities oscillate between 0 and 1 Bohr magnetons and are increasingly delocalized. The substitutional Zn suffers a Jahn-Teller-like distortion from the C3v symmetry and, as a consequence, has a zero spin moment. Fe occupies a distinct position at the border between regimes (ii) and (iii) and shows a more complex behavior: while is non-magnetic at the level of GGA calculations, its spin moment can be switched on using GGA+U calculations with moderate values of the U parameter.
Graphene is an ideal material to study fundamental Coulomb- and phonon-induced carrier scattering processes. Its remarkable gapless and linear band structure opens up new carrier relaxation channels. In particular, Auger scattering bridging the valence and the conduction band changes the number of charge carriers and gives rise to a significant carrier multiplication - an ultrafast many-particle phenomenon that is promising for the design of highly efficient photodetectors. Furthermore, the vanishing density of states at the Dirac point combined with ultrafast phonon-induced intraband scattering results in an accumulation of carriers and a population inversion suggesting the design of graphene-based terahertz lasers. Here, we review our work on the ultrafast carrier dynamics in graphene and Landau-quantized graphene is presented providing a microscopic view on the appearance of carrier multiplication and population inversion.
Strong light-matter interactions in both the single-emitter and collective strong coupling regimes attract significant attention due to emerging quantum and nonlinear optics applications, as well as opportunities for modifying material-related properties. Further exploration of these phenomena requires an appropriate theoretical methodology, which is demanding since polaritons are at the intersection between quantum optics, solid state physics and quantum chemistry. Fortunately, however, nanoscale polaritons can be realized in small plasmon-molecule systems, which in principle allows treating them using ab initio methods, although this has not been demonstrated to date. Here, we show that time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT) calculations can access the physics of nanoscale plasmon-molecule hybrids and predict vacuum Rabi splitting in a system comprising a few-hundred-atom aluminum nanoparticle interacting with one or several benzene molecules. We show that the cavity quantum electrodynamics approach holds down to resonators on the order of a few cubic nanometers, yielding a single-molecule coupling strength exceeding 200 meV due to a massive vacuum field value of 4.5 V/nm. In a broader perspective, our approach enables parameter-free in-depth studies of polaritonic systems, including ground state, chemical and thermodynamic modifications of the molecules in the strong-coupling regime, which may find important use in emerging applications such as cavity enhanced catalysis.