We demonstrate ultrafast dephasing in the random transport of light through a layer consisting of strongly scattering GaP nanowires. Dephasing results in a nonlinear intensity modulation of individual pseudomodes which is 100 times larger than that of bulk GaP. Different contributions to the nonlinear response are separated using total transmission, white-light frequency correlation, and statistical pseudomode analysis. A dephasing time of $1.2\pm 0.2$~ps is found. Quantitative agreement is obtained with numerical model calculations which include photoinduced absorption and deformation of individual scatterers. Nonlinear dephasing of photonic eigenmodes opens up avenues for ultrafast control of random lasers, nanophotonic switches, and photon localization.
We present an ultrafast all-optical gated amplifier, or transistor, consisting of a forest of ZnO nanowire lasers. A gate light pulse creates a dense electron-hole plasma and excites laser action inside the nanowires. Source light traversing the nanolaser forest is amplified, partly as it is guided through the nanowires, and partly as it propagates diffusively through the forest. We have measured transmission increases at the drain up to a factor 34 for 385-nm light. Time-resolved amplification measurements show that the lasing is rapidly self-quenching, yielding pulse responses as short as 1.…
The coherence of polaritons plays a fundamental role in numerous recent experimental observations, from strong coupling to Bose-Einstein condensation, but accessing the coherence of polaritons is a difficult task due to the high energy of plasmons and excitons. However, surface phonon polaritons offer similar promises at much lower energy. Here, we demonstrate the possibility to use visible ultrafast lasers to generate and time resolve coherent surface phonon polaritons in nanowires. We show that these modes are generated through the ultrafast screening of the surface depletion field. By compa…
We use semiclassical Monte Carlo approach to investigate spin polarized transport in InP and InSb nanowires. Spin dephasing in III-V channels is caused due to D'yakonov- Perel (DP) relaxation and due to Elliott-Yafet (EY) relaxation. The DP relaxation occurs because of bulk inversion asymmetry (Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction) and structural inversion asymmetry (Rashba spin-orbit interaction). The injection polarization direction studied is that along the length of the channel. The dephasing rate is found to be very strong for InSb as compared to InP which has larger spin dephasing lengths.…
We investigate spin polarized electron transport in ultra-thin Si-Core/Ge-Shell and Ge-Core/Si-Shell nanowire system using semi-classical Monte Carlo simulation method. Depolarization of electron's spin occurs in nanowire mainly due to D'yakonov-Perel dephasing (DP-mechanism) and Elliott-Yafet dephasing (EY-mechanism). We studied the dependence of spin dephasing on ultra-thin silicon core diameter in Si-Core/Ge-Shell nanowire and germanium core diameter in Ge-Core/Si-Shell nanowire. Variation in spin dephasing length with varying core diameter ranging from 1 nm to 9 nm indicate that spin depha…
We study spin polarized transport in silicon germanium nanowires using a semiclassical monte carlo approach. Spin depolarization in the channel is caused due to D'yakonov-Perel (DP) relaxation associated with Rashba spin orbit coupling and due to Elliott- Yafet (EY) relaxation. We investigate the dependence of spin dephasing on germanium mole fraction in silicon germanium nanowires. The spin dephasing lengths decrease with an increase in the germanium mole fraction. We also find that the temperature has a strong influence on the dephasing rate and spin relaxation lengths increase with decrease…
To clarify the ultrafast temporal interplay of the different photocurrent mechanisms occurring in single InAs-nanowire-based circuits, an on-chip photocurrent pump-probe spectroscopy based on coplanar striplines was utilized. The data are interpreted in terms of a photo-thermoelectric current and the transport of photogenerated holes to the electrodes as the dominating ultrafast photocurrent contributions. Moreover, it is shown that THz radiation is generated in the optically excited InAs-nanowires, which is interpreted in terms of a dominating photo-Dember effect. The results are relevant for…
We present a calculation of the dephasing time of electrons in a ferromagnet relevant for the conductance fluctuations. We focus on the contribution from the interaction with spin waves. Explicit results are presented for a quasi-one-dimensional systems. Going beyond previous calculations, we do not restrict ourselves to the limit of a small exchange splitting compared to the electronic elastic scattering time, nor does our calculation rely on the diffusion approximation to describe electronic transport.
Unexpected fluctuating charge field near a semiconductor quantum dot has severely limited the coherence time of the localized spin qubit. It is the interplay between the spin-orbit coupling and the asymmetrical confining potential in a quantum dot, that mediates the longitudinal interaction between the spin qubit and the fluctuating charge field. Here, we study the $1/f$ charge noise induced spin dephasing in a nanowire double quantum dot via exactly solving its eigen-energies and eigenfunctions. Our calculations demonstrate that the spin dephasing has a nonmonotonic dependence on the asymmetr…
Phase-locked ultrashort pulses in the rich terahertz (THz) spectral range have provided key insights into phenomena as diverse as quantum confinement, first-order phase transitions, high-temperature superconductivity, and carrier transport in nanomaterials. Ultrabroadband electro-optic sampling of few-cycle field transients can even reveal novel dynamics that occur faster than a single oscillation cycle of light. However, conventional THz spectroscopy is intrinsically restricted to ensemble measurements by the diffraction limit. As a result, it measures dielectric functions averaged over the s…
To understand quantum mechanical transport in ferromagnetic semiconductor the knowledge of basic material properties like phase coherence length and corresponding dephasing mechanism are indispensable ingredients. The lack of observable quantum phenomena prevented experimental access to these quantities so far. Here we report about the observations of universal conductance fluctuations in ferromagnetic (Ga,Mn)As. The analysis of the length and temperature dependence of the fluctuations reveals a T^{-1} dependence of the dephasing time.
Relaxation and dephasing of hole spins are measured in a gate-defined Ge/Si nanowire double quantum dot using a fast pulsed-gate method and dispersive readout. An inhomogeneous dephasing time $T_2^* \sim 0.18~\mathrm{μs}$ exceeds corresponding measurements in III-V semiconductors by more than an order of magnitude, as expected for predominately nuclear-spin-free materials. Dephasing is observed to be exponential in time, indicating the presence of a broadband noise source, rather than Gaussian, previously seen in systems with nuclear-spin-dominated dephasing.
We have measured the quantum-interference magnetoresistances in two single indium tin oxide (ITO) nanowires between 0.25 and 40 K, by using the four-probe configuration method. The magnetoresistances are compared with the one-dimensional weak-(anti)localization theory to extract the electron dephasing length $L_ϕ$. We found, in a 60-nm diameter nanowire with a low resistivity of $ρ$(10 K) = 185 $μΩ$ cm, that $L_ϕ$ is long, increasing from 150 nm at 40 K to 520 nm at 0.25 K. Therefore, the nanowire reveals strict one-dimensional weak-localization effect up to several tens of degrees of Kelvin. …
Using the ultrafast pump-probe transient absorption spectroscopy, the femtosecond-resolved plasmon-exciton interaction of graphene-Ag nanowire hybrids is experimentally investigated, in the VIS-NIR region. The plasmonic lifetime of Ag nanowire is about 150 femtosecond (fs). For a single layer of graphene, the fast dynamic process at 275 fs is due to the excitation of graphene excitons, and the slow process at 1.4 picosecond (ps) is due to the plasmonic hot electron interaction with phonons of graphene. For the graphene-Ag nanowire hybrids, the time scale of the plasmon-induced hot electron tra…
We simulated spin polarized transport of electrons along III-V nanowires and two dimensional III-V channels using semi classical Monte Carlo method. Properties of spin relaxation length have been investigated in different III-V zinc-blende materials at various conditions, such as, temperature, external field etc. Spin dephasing in III-V channels is caused due to D'yakonov-Perel (DP) relaxation and due to Elliott-Yafet (EY) relaxation. Spin dephasing length in nanowire is found to be greater than that in 2-D channel.
Optimum design of efficient nanowire solar cells requires better understanding of light diffusion in a nanowire array. Here we demonstrate that our recently developed ultrafast all-optical shutter can be used to directly measure the dwell time of light in a nanowire array. Our measurements on disordered ZnO nanowire arrays, "nanowire forests," indicate that the photon mean free path and the dwell time of light can be well predicted from SEM images.
We investigate the usefulness and viability of the scheme developed by Viola and Lloyd [Phys. Rev. A 58, 2733 (1998)] to control dephasing in the context of exciton-based quantum computation with self-assembled quantum dots. We demonstrate that optical coherence of a confined exciton qubit exposed to phonon-induced dephasing can be substantially enhanced through the application of a simple periodic sequence of control pulses. The shape of the quantum dot has a significant effect on the dephasing properties. Remarkably, we find that quantum dots with parameters optimized for implementing quantu…
We study high-field spin transport of electrons in a quasi one-dimensional channel of a $GaAs$ gate controlled spin interferometer (SPINFET) using a semiclassical formalism (spin density matrix evolution coupled with Boltzmann transport equation). Spin dephasing (or depolarization) is predominantly caused by D'yakonov-Perel' relaxation associated with momentum dependent spin orbit coupling effects that arise due to bulk inversion asymmetry (Dresselhaus spin orbit coupling) and structural inversion asymmetry (Rashba spin orbit coupling). Spin dephasing length in a one dimensional channel has be…
We propose a fast and accurate spin initialization method for a single electron trapped in an electrostatic quantum dot. The dot is created in a nanodevice composed of a catalytically grown indium antimonide (InSb) nanowire and nearby gates to which control voltages are applied. Initially we insert a single electron of arbitrary spin into the wire. Operations on spin are performed using the Rashba spin-orbit interaction induced by an electric field. First, a single pulse of voltages applied to lateral gates is used to split the electron wavepacket into two parts with opposite spin orientations…
We investigate the relaxation dynamics of photogenerated carriers in silicon nanowires consisting of a crystalline core and a surrounding amorphous shell, using femtosecond time-resolved differential reflectivity and transmission spectroscopy at photon energies of 3.15 eV and 1.57 eV. The complex behavior of the differential transmission and reflectivity transients is the mixed contributions from the crystalline core and the amorphous silicon on the nanowire surface and the substrate where competing effects of state filling and photoinduced absorption govern the carrier dynamics. Faster relaxa…
Physical implementations of large-scale quantum processors based on solid-state platforms benefit from realizations of quantum bits positioned in regular arrays. Self-assembled quantum dots are well-established as promising candidates for quantum optics and quantum information processing, but they are randomly positioned. Site-controlled quantum dots, on the other hand, are grown in pre-defined locations, but have not yet been sufficiently developed to be used as a platform for quantum information processing. In this letter we demonstrate all-optical ultrafast complete coherent control of a qu…
Recent advances in the growth of III-V semiconductor nanowires (NWs) hold great promise for nanoscale optoelectronic device applications. Recently, it was found that a small amount of nitrogen (N) incorporation in III-V semiconductor NWs can effectively red-shift their wavelength of operation and tailor their electronic properties for specific applications. However, understanding the impact of N incorporation on non-equilibrium charge carrier dynamics and transport in semiconducting NWs is critical in achieving efficient semiconducting NW devices. In this work, ultrafast optical pump-terahertz…
We demonstrate a new concept for reconfigurable nanophotonic devices exploiting ultrafast nonlinear control of shaped wavefronts in a multimode nanomaterial consisting of semiconductor nanowires. Femtosecond pulsed laser excitation of the nanowire mat is shown to provide an efficient nonlinear mechanism to control both destructive and constructive interference in a shaped wavefront. Modulations of up to 63% are induced by optical pumping, due to a combination of multimode dephasing and induced transient absorption. We show that part of the nonlinear phase dynamics can be inverted to provide a …
We demonstrate single photon emission from self-assembled m-plane InGaN quantum dots (QDs) embedded on the side-walls of GaN nanowires. A combination of electron microscopy, cathodoluminescence, time-resolved micro-PL and photon autocorrelation experiments give a thorough evaluation of the QDs structural and optical properties. The QD exhibits anti-bunched emission up to 100 K, with a measured autocorrelation function of g^2(0) = 0.28 (0.03) at 5 K. Studies on a statistically significant number of QDs show that these m-plane QDs exhibit very fast radiative lifetimes (260 +/- 55 ps) suggesting …
We explore various aspects of magneto-conductance oscillations in semiconductor nanowires, developing quantum transport models based on the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism. In the clean case, Aharonov-Bohm (AB - h/e) oscillations are found to be dominant, contingent upon the surface confinement of electrons in the nanowire. We also numerically study disordered nanowires of finite length, bridging a gap in the existing literature. By varying the nanowire length and disorder strength, we identify the transition where Al'tshuler-Aronov-Spivak (AAS - h/2e) oscillations start dominating,…
We report a systematic experimental study of mesoscopic conductance fluctuations in superconductor/normal/superconductor (SNS) devices Nb/InAs-nanowire/Nb. These fluctuations far exceed their value in the normal state and strongly depend on temperature even in the low-temperature regime. This dependence is attributed to high sensitivity of perfectly conducting channels to dephasing and the SNS fluctuations thus provide a sensitive probe of dephasing in a regime where normal transport fails to detect it. Further, the conductance fluctuations are strongly non-linear in bias voltage and reveal su…
In this paper we describe a nonlinear imaging method employed to spatially map the occurrence of constrictions occurring on an electrically-stressed gold nanowire. The approach consists at measuring the influence of a tightly focused ultrafast pulsed laser on the electronic transport in the nanowire. We found that structural defects distributed along the nanowire are efficient nonlinear optical sources of radiation and that the differential conductance is significantly decreased when the laser is incident on such electrically-induced morphological changes. This imaging technique is applied to …
We investigate the excited state electronic structure of the model phase transition system In/Si(111) using femtosecond time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (trARPES) with an XUV laser source at 500 kHz . Excited state band mapping is used to characterize the normally unoccupied electronic structure above the Fermi level in both structural phases of indium nanowires on Si(111): the metallic (4x1) and the gapped (8x2) phases. The extracted band positions are compared with the band structure calculated using density functional theory (DFT) within both the LDA and GW approximations…
We present a theoretical formulation of the coherent ultrafast nonlinear optical response of a strongly correlated system and discuss an example where the Coulomb correlations dominate. We separate out the correlated contributions to the third-order nonlinear polarization, and identify non-Markovian dephasing effects coming from the non-instantaneous interactions and propagation in time of the collective excitations of the many-body system. We discuss the signatures, in the time and frequency dependence of the four-wave-mixing (FWM) spectrum, of the inter-Landau level magnetoplasmon (MP) excit…
Using a novel approach to ultrafast resonant pump-probe spectroscopy we investigate the spectral shape and dynamics of absorption features related to the A exciton in an hBN/MoSe$_2$/hBN van der Waals heterostructure. While in a pure two-level system a pump-probe experiment measures the occupation or the polarization dynamics, depending on the time ordering of the pulse pair, in the transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) system both quantities get thoroughly mixed by strong exciton-exciton interaction. We find that for short positive delays the spectral lines experience pronounced changes in th…
We advance spin noise spectroscopy to an ultrafast tool to resolve high frequency spin dynamics in semiconductors. The optical non-demolition experiment reveals the genuine origin of the inhomogeneous spin dephasing in n-doped GaAs wafers at densities at the metal-to-insulator transition. The measurements prove in conjunction with depth resolved spin noise measurements that the broadening of the spin dephasing rate does not result from thermal fluctuations or spin-phonon interaction, as previously suggested, but from surface electron depletion.
We discuss Fermi-edge singularity effects on the linear and nonlinear transient response of an electron gas in a doped semiconductor. We use a bosonization scheme to describe the low energy excitations, which allows to compute the time and temperature dependence of the response functions. Coherent control of the energy absorption at resonance is analyzed in the linear regime. It is shown that a phase-shift appears in the coherent control oscillations, which is not present in the excitonic case. The nonlinear response is calculated analytically and used to predict that four wave-mixing experime…
Weak localization was observed and determined in a black phosphorus (bP) field-effect transistor 65 nm thick. The weak localization behaviour was found to be in excellent agreement with the Hikami-Larkin-Nagaoka model for fields up to 1~T, from which characteristic scattering lengths could be inferred. The dephasing length $L_ϕ$ was found to increase linearly with increasing hole density attaining a maximum value of 55 nm at a hole density of approximately $10^{13} cm^{-2}$ inferred from the Hall effect. The temperature dependence of $L_ϕ$ was also investigated and above 1~K, it was found to d…
We use a quantum-dynamical model to investigate the optical response of graphene under low excitation power. Ultrafast carrier relaxation processes, which play an important role for understanding the optical response of graphene, are included phenomenologically into the model. We obtain analytical solutions for the linear and third-order nonlinear optical response of graphene, and four-wave mixing in particular. This theory shows agreement with recently reported experimental data on linear complex optical conductivity and four-wave mixing, providing evidence for ultrafast quantum-dephasing tim…
Studies of negative magnetoresistance in novel materials have recently been in the forefront of spintronic research. Here, we report an experimental observation of the temperature dependent negative magnetoresistance in Bi2Te3 topological insulator (TI) nanowires at ultralow temperatures (20 mK). We find a crossover from negative to positive magnetoresistance while increasing temperature under longitudinal magnetic field. We observe a large negative magnetoresistance which reaches -22% at 8T. The interplay between negative and positive magnetoresistance can be understood in terms of the compet…
We investigate the low temperature transport in 8 nm diameter Si junctionless nanowire field effect transistors fabricated by top down techniques with a wrap-around gate and two different activated doping densities. First we extract the intrinsic gate capacitance of the device geometry from a device that shows Coulomb blockade at 13 mK with over 500 Coulomb peaks across a gate voltage range of 6 V indicating the formation of a single island in the entire nanowire channel. In two other devices, doped Si:P $4\times10^{19}\,\text{cm}^{-3}$ and $2\times10^{20}\,\text{cm}^{-3}$, we observe quantum …
The interaction between light and metal nanoparticles enables investigations of microscopic phenomena on nanometer length and ultrashort time scales, benefiting from strong confinement and enhancement of the optical field. However, the ultrafast dynamics of these nanoparticles are primarily investigated by multiphoton photoluminescence on picoseconds or photoemission on femtoseconds independently. Here, we presented two-photon photoluminescence (TPPL) measurements on individual Au nanobipyramids (AuNP) to reveal their ultrafast dynamics by two-pulse excitation on a global time scale ranging fr…
Detection and controlling of acoustic (AC) phonon phase have been strenuous tasks although such capability is crucial for further manipulating thermal properties. Here, we present a versatile formalism for tracing AC nanowaves with arbitrary strain compositions by incorporating the nonlinear photoelasticity (PE) into ultrafast acoustics where broad AC spectrum encompassing thermally important THz frequency range should be collected far beyond Brillouin frequency. The initial AC phase upon displacive carrier generation could be inherently varied depending on the bipolar AC compositions by imple…
