Radiative Auger is a process that leads to red-shifted satellite peaks in the emission of atoms and solid-state quantum emitters. It is caused by Coulomb interactions between charged carriers. In our recent paper in Nature Communications, we show for the first time that it is possible to turn the whole process around by optical driving of the radiative Auger transition. Possible applications could be fast optical switching or THz spectroscopy.
Nadine Leisgang was recognized with the Swiss Nanotechnology PhD award sponsored by the Hightech Zentrum Aargau for the publication “Giant Stark splitting of an exciton in bilayer MoS2”. Congratulations!!
Read more here: https://nanoscience.ch/en/2021/08/09/excellent-prizes-for-outstanding-doctoral-students/
Nadine Leisgang received the Nano Image Award 2021 for the optical micrograph image of a gated van der Waals heterostructure. The device consists of two monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides encapsulated between insulating hexagonal boron nitride flakes. Direct gold contacts allow tuning the carrier concentration in the optically active layers in the middle of the structure. Few-layer graphene sheets on the top and bottom of the stack serve as local gates to apply an electric field across the device.
This image reflects the complexity and – at the same time – the beauty of the fabrication of van der Waals heterostructures.
In our recent publication in ACS Photonics, we report on the pulsed-laser-induced generation of high-quality nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond facilitated by a solid-immersion lens (SIL). The SIL enables laser writing at energies as low as 5.8 nJ per pulse and allows vacancies to be formed close to a diamond surface without inducing surface graphitization. We present samples in which NV center arrays were laser-written across the full diamond thickness, all presenting narrow optical linewidth distributions with means down to 62.1 MHz. The linewidths include the effect of long-term spectral diffusion induced by a 532 nm repump laser for charge-state stabilization, underlining the extremely low charge-noise environment of the created color centers.
In our recent open-access publication at Physical Review Applied we report a technique to control the frequency splitting of two orthogonal polarization modes in an open semiconductor microcavity. We employ the photoelastic effect by stressing uniaxially the sample and controlling the birefringence of the semiconductor crystal. The semiconductor mirror is mounted on a strain piezo, and the amount of stress is gauged by observing the emission spectrum shift of quantum dots embedded in the sample. We achieve up to 11 GHz tuning at the center of the stopband.
Natasha Tomm was one of the 3 PhD students from the QCQT PhD school to be awarded with the QCQT Excellence award. The prize is awarded by the Basel Center for Quantum Computing and Quantum Coherence in recognition of her outstanding work “A bright and fast source of coherent single photons“. Congratulations!
Read more here: https://www.quantum.unibas.ch/qcqt-phd-school/awards-support/
We found that GaAs surface passivation is key to minimize losses in a gated semiconductor microcavity and thus increase its quality factor by almost two orders of magnitude. The procedure not only eliminates a Franz-Keldysh-like surface loss inherent to gated semiconductor microcavities, but also mitigates the effect of surface scattering due to roughness. We elucidate these findings in our open-access publication at Physical Review Applied.
Nadine Leisgang was featured by NCCR (National Centres of Competence in Research) in their new campaign #NCCRWomen. In the video, Nadine explains a bit about her work as a physicist at the University of Basel and her motivation to do science. Congratulations!
Read more here: https://nccr-qsit.ethz.ch/equal-opportunity/NCCRWomen_campaign.html
Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eaSz3fry84
In our recent publication at Applied Physics Letters we present our work on silicon-finFET quantum dots with perfectly self-aligned 2nd gate layer and gate lengths down to 15 nm. The fabrication is industry compatible and scalable and gives very high-quality devices. We observe Pauli spin blockade and extract the hole g-factor and strong spin-orbit coupling with spin-orbit length of ~50 nm, thus paving the way for scalable silicon spin qubits with fast, all-electrical control. Device fabrication and measurements were done in collaboration between IBM Zürich and University of Basel team.
In our recent publication in Nature Nanotechnology we present the results of our record-breaking single photon source. The source, based on InAs quantum dots coupled in a carefully designed open-access microcavity, is able to emit up to 1 billion single photons per second with an end-to-end efficiency of 57%. Furthermore, photons present high single-photon purity (98%) and preserve high coherence (HOM visibility = 97%) in timescales of up to 1.5us. This result allows for significant improvement in quantum processing with photons. More information can be found at UniNews.
We have realized electrical tuning of the energy and the charge-state of GaAs quantum dots in AlGaAs. In contrast to previous work on the same system, the quantum dots do not suffer from a fluctuating charge-state. At the same time, we achieve linewidths that are just a few percent broader than the lifetime-limit. Our results are an important step towards connecting a quantum dot as a single-photon emitter to a rubidium memory in which quantum information can be stored. You can find our results in the open-access journal Nature Communications.
We have achieved large-range frequency tuning of a single-photon emitter, a GaAs quantum dot in a bulk sample. The total tuning range is three orders of magnitude large than the quantum dot’s linewidth, which remains narrow throughout the entire tuning process. Our results are an important step towards building a hybrid system connecting a single-photon emitter to a rubidium quantum memory. You find our work published in Applied Physics Letters
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In our recent paper, we have shown that interlayer excitons in bilayer MoS2 exhibit both a high oscillator strength and highly tunable energies in an applied electric field. Owing to this very large tunability, we were able to optically probe the interaction between intra- and interlayer excitons as they were energetically tuned into resonance. These results have been published in Nature Nanotechnology. More details can also be read at UniNews.
Daniel Najer was one of the 5 young scientists to win the Swiss Nanotechnology PhD award. The prize is awarded by the company Bühler for Daniel’s publication on an efficient light-matter interface, coupling a semiconductor QD strongly to an optical microcavity. Congratulations!
Read more here: https://nanoscience.ch/en/2020/07/15/five-awards-for-young-scientists/
We report a radiative Auger process for a trion in a semiconductor quantum dot. The process allows us to measure the quantum mechanical energy separations and the carrier dynamics in the quantum dot. The results have been published in Nature Nanotechnology.
Our work reporting evidence of a first-order magnetic phase transition in a gated two-dimensional semiconductor, monolayer-MoS2, has been published in Physical Review Letters.
We report cavity-enhanced Raman scattering on diamond, in particular its use in aligning our tunable microcavities.
A coherent exchange of a single energy quantum between an “atom” (in our case a gated InAs quantum dot) and an optical cavity has been reported by our group in Nature. We achieve an atom-cavity Cooperativity of 150, and probe the transitions between singly and doubly excited photon-atom system using photon-statistics spectroscopy.
In our recent paper, we have shown that several optical properties of a quantum dot are correlated with the area of the so-called Voronoi cell surrounding it. In the image below, the Voronoi-diagram is shown in red for a few tens of quantum dots. The quantum dot positions are indicated as black dots.
We have recently shown that InGaAs quantum dots can be grown without conduction band states of the so-called wetting layer. This work is the result of a collaboration with the Ruhr Universität Bochum and the Forschungszentrum Jülich. In the picture below, you see a transmission electron microscopy image of a quantum dot grown with the new technique.
