Local signatures of electron-electron scattering in an electronic cavity
Carolin Gold, Beat A. Bräm, Richard Steinacher, Tobias Krähenmann, Andrea Hofmann, Christian Reichl, Werner Wegscheider, Mansour Shayegan, Klaus Ensslin, Thomas Ihn
We image equilibrium and non-equilibrium transport through a two-dimensional electronic cavity using scanning gate microscopy (SGM). Injecting electrons into the cavity through a quantum point contact close to equilibrium, we raster-scan a weakly invasive tip above the cavity regions and measure the modulated conductance through the cavity. Varying the electron injection energy between $\pm$ 2 meV, we observe that conductance minima turn into maxima beyond the energy threshold of $\pm$ 0.6 meV. This observation bears similarity to previous measurements by Jura et al. [Jura et al., Phys. Rev. B 82, 155328 (2010)] who used a strongly invasive tip potential to study electron injection into an open two-dimensional electron gas. This resemblance suggests a similar microscopic origin based on electron-electron interactions.
In this work, we performed magnetoresistance measurement in a hybrid system consisting of an arc-shaped quantum point contact (QPC) and a flat, rectangular QPC, both of which together form an electronic cavity between them. The results highlight a transition between collimation-induced resistance dip to a magnetoresistance peak as the strength of coupling between the QPC and the electronic cavity was increased. The initial results show the promise of hybrid quantum system for future quantum technologies.
We report the signatures of the exciton correlation effects with finite memory time in frequency domain degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) in semiconductor microcavity. By utilizing the polarization selection rules, we discriminate instantaneous, mean field interactions between excitons with the same spins, long-living correlation due to the formation of biexciton state by excitons with opposite spins, and short-memory correlation effects in the continuum of unbound two-exciton states. The DFWM spectra give us the relative contributions of these effects and the upper limit for the time of the …
The resemblance between electrons and optical waves has strongly driven the advancement of mesoscopic physics. However, electron waves have yet to be understood in open cavity structures which have provided contemporary optics with rich insight towards non-Hermitian systems and complex interactions between resonance mode. Here, we report the realization of an open cavity resonator in a two-dimensional electronic system. We studied the resonant electron modes within the cavity and resolved the signatures of longitudinal and transverse quantization, showing that the modes are robust despite the …
A strong coupling between an electronic cavity and a quantum dot has been recently demonstrated [Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 166603 (2015)] and described in a comprehensive theoretical framework [Phys. Rev. B 96, 235431 (2017)]. Here, we focus on the signatures that demonstrate the cavity's impact on inelastic singlet-triplet transport through the dot. We find the same transport signatures in the experiment as predicted by the model that describes the coupled dot--cavity system. Interestingly, a lowest-order treatement of the coupling to the electronic leads on top of an exact diagonalisation of the…
We use Scanning Gate Microscopy to study electron transport through an open, gate-defined resonator in a Ga(Al)As heterostructure. Raster-scanning the voltage-biased metallic tip above the resonator, we observe distinct conductance modulations as a function of the tip-position and voltage. Quantum mechanical simulations reproduce these conductance modulations and reveal their relation to the partial local density of states in the resonator. Our measurements illustrate the current frontier between possibilities and limitations in imaging the local density of states in buried electron systems us…
We identify signatures of the intrinsic nonlinear interaction between light and mechanical motion in cavity optomechanical systems. These signatures are observable even when the cavity linewidth exceeds the optomechanical coupling rate. A strong laser drive red-detuned by twice the mechanical frequency from the cavity resonance frequency makes two-phonon processes resonant, which leads to a nonlinear version of optomechanically induced transparency. This effect provides a new method of measuring the average phonon number of the mechanical oscillator. Furthermore, we show that if the strong las…
Cavity spintronics recently heralded non-local magnonic signal transfer between magnetic samples. Here we show that by including superconductors in the cavity, we can make use of these principles to bring composite superconductor--ferromagnet systems to the macroscale. We analyze how a superconductor's a.c. conductivity influences the spin dynamics of a spatially separated magnet, and we discuss the potential impact on spintronic applications.
We present a theoretical analysis of spin-coherent electronic transport across a mesoscopic dot-cavity system. Such spin-coherent transport has been recently demonstrated in an experiment with a dot-cavity hybrid implemented in a high-mobility two-dimensional electron gas [C. Rössler et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 166603 (2015)] and its spectroscopic signatures have been interpreted in terms of a competition between Kondo-type dot-lead and molecular-type dot-cavity singlet-formation. Our analysis brings forward all the transport features observed in the experiments and supports the claim that a…
We show experimentally how quantum interference can be produced using an integrated quantum system comprising an arch-shaped short quantum wire (or quantum point contact, QPC) of 1D electrons and a reflector forming an electronic cavity. On tuning the coupling between the QPC and the electronic cavity, fine oscillations are observed when the arch QPC is operated in the quasi-1D regime. These oscillations correspond to interference between the 1D states and a state which is similar to the Fabry-Perot state and suppressed by a small transverse magnetic field of 60mT. Tuning the reflector, we fin…
We analyze how a multilevel many-electron system in a photon cavity approaches the steady state when coupled to external leads. When a plunger gate is used to lower cavity photon dressed one- and two-electron states below the bias window defined by the external leads, we can identify one regime with nonradiative transitions dominating the electron transport, and another regime with radiative transitions. Both transitions trap the electrons in the states below the bias bringing the system into a steady state. The order of the two regimes and their relative strength depends on the location of th…
We study a relativistic quantum cavity system realized by etching out from a graphene sheet by quantum transport measurements and theoretical calculations. The conductance of the graphene cavity has been measured as a function of the back gate voltage (or the Fermi energy) and the magnetic field applied perpendicular to the graphene sheet, and characteristic conductance contour patterns are observed in the measurements. In particular, two types of high conductance contour lines, i.e., straight and parabolic-like high conductance contour lines, are found in the measurements. The theoretical cal…
Employing the ultrafast control of electronic states of a semiconductor quantum dot in a cavity, we introduce a novel approach to achieve on-demand emission of single photons with almost perfect indistinguishability and photon pairs with near ideal entanglement. Our scheme is based on optical excitation off-resonant to a cavity mode followed by ultrafast control of the electronic states using the time-dependent quantum-confined Stark effect, which then allows for cavity-resonant emission. Our theoretical analysis takes into account cavity-loss mechanisms, the Stark effect, and phonon-induced d…
We investigate theoretically the properties of the photon state and the electronic transport in a system consisting of a metallic quantum dot strongly coupled to a superconducting microwave transmission line cavity. Within the framework of circuit quantum electrodynamics we derive a Hamiltonian for arbitrary strong capacitive coupling between the dot and the cavity. The dynamics of the system is described by a quantum master equation, accounting for the electronic transport as well as the coherent, non-equilibrium properties of the photon state. The photon state is investigated, focusing on, f…
Quantum engineering requires controllable artificial systems with quantum coherence exceeding the device size and operation time. This can be achieved with geometrically confined low-dimensional electronic structures embedded within ultraclean materials, with prominent examples being artificial atoms (quantum dots) and quantum corrals (electronic cavities). Combining the two structures, we implement a mesoscopic coupled dot-cavity system in a high-mobility two-dimensional electron gas, and obtain an extended spin-singlet state in the regime of strong dot-cavity coupling. Engineering such exten…
The effect of a tunable, externally coupled Fabry-Pérot cavity to resonantly enhance the optical Hall effect signatures at terahertz frequencies produced by a traditional Drude-like two-dimensional electron gas is shown and discussed in this communication. As a result, the detection of optical Hall effect signatures at conveniently obtainable magnetic fields, for example by neodymium permanent magnets, is demonstrated. An AlInN/GaN-based high electron mobility transistor structure grown on a sapphire substrate is used for the experiment. The optical Hall effect signatures and their dispersions…
We extend previous studies on transport through ballistic chaotic cavities with spatial left-right (LR) reflection symmetry to include the presence of direct processes. We first analyze fully LR-symmetric systems in the presence of direct processes and compare the distribution w(T) of the transmission coefficient T with that for an asymmetric cavity with the same "optical" S matrix. We then study the problem of "external mixing" of the symmetry caused by an asymmetric coupling of the cavity to the outside. We first consider the case where symmetry breaking arises because two symmetrically posi…
We study quantum effects of the vacuum light-matter interaction in materials embedded in optical cavities. We focus on the electronic response of a two-dimensional semiconductor placed inside a planar cavity. By using a diagrammatic expansion of the electron-photon interaction, we describe signatures of light-matter hybridization characterized by large asymmetric shifts of the spectral weight at resonant frequencies. We follow the evolution of the light-dressing from the cavity to the free-space limit. In the cavity limit, light-matter hybridization results in a modification of the optical gap…
We study one-dimensional $p$-wave superconductors capacitively coupled to a microwave stripline cavity. By probing the light exiting from the cavity, one can reveal the electronic susceptibility of the $p$-wave superconductor. We analyze two superconducting systems: the prototypical Kitaev chain, and a topological semiconducting wire. For both systems, we show that the photonic measurements, via the electronic susceptibility, allows us to determine the topological phase transition point, the emergence of the Majorana fermions, and the parity of their ground state. We show that all these effect…
Signatures of broken symmetries in the excitations of a periodic 2DEG coupled to a cylindrical photon cavity
University of Iceland（冰岛大学）；Reykjavik University（雷克雅未克大学）；Yerevan State University（埃里温国立大学）；National Taiwan University（台湾大学）；National Center for Theoretical Sciences（国家理论科学中心）；University of Sulaimani（苏莱曼尼大学）；National United University（国立联合大学）
Two distinct types of magnetoresistance oscillations are observed in two electronic Fabry-Perot interferometers of different sizes in the integer quantum Hall regime. Measuring these oscillations as a function of magnetic field and gate voltages, we observe three signatures that distinguish the two types. The oscillations observed in a 2.0 square micron device are understood to arise from the Coulomb blockade mechanism, and those observed in an 18 square micron device from the Aharonov-Bohm mechanism. This work clarifies, provides ways to distinguish, and demonstrates control over, these disti…
We investigate the coupling between a quantized electromagnetic field in a cavity resonator and a Coulomb interacting electronic system in a nanostructure in an external magnetic field. Effects caused by the geometry of the electronic system and the polarization of the electromagnetic field are explicitly taken into account. Our numerical results demonstrate that the two-level system approximation and the Jaynes-Cummings model remain valid in the weak electron-photon coupling regime, while the quadratic vector potential in the diamagnetic part of the charge current leads to significant correct…
We theoretically analyze and simulate the temporal dynamics of strongly coupled quantum dot-cavity system driven by a resonant laser pulse. We observe the signature of Rabi oscillation in the time resolved response of the system (i.e., in the numerically calculated cavity output), derive simplified linear and non-linear semi-classical models that approximate well the system's behavior in the limits of high and low power drive pulse, and describe the role of quantum coherence in the exact dynamics of the system. Finally, we also present experimental data showing the signature of the Rabi oscill…
We demonstrate the emergence of classical features in electronic quantum transport for the scanning gate microscopy response in a cavity defined by a quantum point contact and a micron-sized circular reflector. The branches in electronic flow characteristic of a quantum point contact opening on a two-dimensional electron gas with weak disorder are folded by the reflector, yielding a complex spatial pattern. Considering the deflection of classical trajectories by the scanning gate tip allows to establish simple relationships of the scanning pattern, which are in agreement with recent experiment…
Hybrid architectures integrating mesoscopic electronic conductors with resonant microwave cavities have a great potential for investigating unexplored regimes of electron-photon coupling. In this context, producing nonclassical squeezed light is a key step towards quantum communication with scalable solid-state devices. Here we show that parametric driving of the electronic conductor induces a squeezed steady state in the cavity. We find that squeezing properties of the cavity are essentially determined by the electronic noise correlators of the quantum conductor. In the case of a tunnel junct…
Inelastic light scattering from Dirac-type electrons in graphene is shown to be dominated by the generation of the inter-band electronic modes which are odd in terms of time-inversion symmetry and belong to the irreducible representation A$_2$ of the point group C$_{6v}$ of the honeycomb crystal. At high magnetic fields, these electron-hole excitations appear as peculiar $n^- \to n^+$ inter-Landau-level modes with energies $ω_n=2\sqrt{2n} \hbar v/λ_B$ and characteristically crossed polarisation of in/out photons.
Pump-probe experiments have suggested the possibility to control electronic correlations by driving infrared-active phonons with resonant midinfrared laser pulses. In this work we study two possible microscopic nonlinear electron-phonon interactions behind these observations, namely coupling of the squared lattice displacement either to the electronic density or to the double occupancy. We investigate whether photon-phonon coupling to quantized light in an optical cavity enables similar control over electronic correlations. We first show that inside a dark cavity electronic interactions increa…
We demonstrate Resonant Tunneling Diodes, embedded in double metal cavities, strongly coupled to the cavity field, while maintaining their electronic properties. We measure the polariton dispersion and find a relative vacuum Rabi splitting of 16%, which explicitly qualifies for the strong-coupling regime. Additionally we show that electronic transport has a significant influence on the polaritons by modulating the coupling strength. The merge between electronic transport and polaritonic physics in our devices opens up a new aspect of cavity quantum electro-dynamics and integrated photonics.
Rhombohedral graphite features peculiar electronic properties, including persistence of low-energy surface bands of a topological nature. Here, we study the contribution of electron-hole excitations towards inelastic light scattering in thin films of rhombohedral graphite. We show that, in contrast to the featureless electron-hole contribution towards Raman spectrum of graphitic films with Bernal stacking, the inelastic light scattering accompanied by electron-hole excitations in crystals with rhombohedral stacking produces distinct features in the Raman signal which can be used both to identi…
A nonlinear stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) is a fascinating physical process that dynamically explores chaotic and non-chaotic phases. In a recent paper Phys. Rev. Res. 2, 042004 (R) (2020), such a phenomenon is realized in a cavity-QED platform. There, the emergence of chaos and its impact on STIRAP efficiency are mainly demonstrated in the semiclassical limit. In the present paper I treat the problem in a fully quantum many-body framework. With the aim of extracting quantum signatures of a classically chaotic system, it is shown that an out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC) meas…
The discontinuous character of the exact exchange-correlation $(xc)$ energy functional of Density Functional Theory is shown to arise naturally in the subband spectra of semiconductor quantum wells. Using an \emph{ab-initio} $xc$ functional, including exchange exactly and correlation in an exact partial way, a discontinuity appears in the $xc$ potential, each time a subband becomes slightly occupied. Exchange and correlation give opposite contributions to the discontinuity, with correlation overcoming exchange. The jump in the intersubband energy is in excellent agreement with experimental dat…
We present an off-resonant excitation scheme that realizes pronounced stationary inversion in a two level system. The created inversion exploits a cavity-assisted two photon resonance to enhance the multi-photon regime of nonlinear cavity QED and survives even in a semiconductor environment, where the cavity decay rate is comparable to the cavity-dot coupling rate. Exciton populations of greater than 0.75 are obtained in the presence of realistic decay and pure dephasing. Quantum trajectory simulations and quantum master equation calculations help elucidate the underlying physics and delineate…
Signatures of Topological Magnon Edge States in THz Spectroscopy and Cavity Response
RWTH Aachen University（亚琛工业大学）；TUM School of Natural Sciences, Physics Department（慕尼黑工业大学自然科学学院物理系）；Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST)（慕尼黑量子科学与技术中心）；Max Planck Institute for Science of Light（马克斯·普朗克光科学研究所）
Employing tight-binding model we investigate the effects of a uniform Y-shaped Kekule lattice distortion on the electronic spectrum and optical conductivity of graphene. We derive a low-energy effective Hamiltonian which is found to be in excellent agreement with one calculated from a diagonalization of the full tight-binding Hamiltonian. Then using the low-energy Hamiltonian and Kubo formula we obtain an analytical expression for the real part of the optical conductivity used to explore the effects of chemical potential, temperature and on-site and hopping energy deviations in details. In par…
A signature of the scattering between microcavity polaritons and longitudinal optical phonons has been observed in the electroluminescence spectrum of an intersubband device operating in the light-matter strong coupling regime. By electrical pumping we resonantly populate the upper polariton branch at different energies as a function of the applied bias. The electroluminescent signal arising from these states is seconded by a phonon replica from the lower branch.
Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking of Cavity Vacuum and Emergent Gyrotropic Effects in Embedded moiré Superlattices
New Cornerstone Science Lab, Department of Physics, The University of Hong Kong（香港大学新Cornerstone科学实验室物理系）；HK Institute of Quantum Science & Technology, University of Hong Kong（香港大学香港量子科学与技术研究所）；Institute of Applied Physics and Materials Engineering, University of Macau（澳门大学应用物理与材料工程研究所）
We theoretically investigate charge transport through electronic bands of a mesoscopic one-dimensional system, where inter-band transitions are coupled to a confined cavity mode, initially prepared close to its vacuum. This coupling leads to light-matter hybridization where the dressed fermionic bands interact via absorption and emission of dressed cavity-photons. Using a self-consistent non-equilibrium Green's function method, we compute electronic transmissions and cavity photon spectra and demonstrate how light-matter coupling can lead to an enhancement of charge conductivity in the steady-…
The optical hybridization of the electronic states in strongly coupled molecule-cavity systems have revealed unique properties such as lasing, room temperature polariton condensation, and the modification of excited electronic landscapes involved in molecular isomerization. Here we show that molecular vibrational modes of the electronic ground state can also be coherently coupled with a micro-cavity mode at room temperature, given the low vibrational thermal occupation factors associated with molecular vibrations, and the collective coupling of a large ensemble of molecules immersed within the…
We present an experimental and theoretical study on the gain mechanism in a photonic-crystal-cavity nanolaser with embedded quantum dots. From time-resolved measurements at low excitation power we find that four excitons are coupled to the cavity. At high excitation power we observe a smooth low-threshold transition from spontaneous emission to lasing. Before lasing emission sets in, however, the excitons are observed to saturate, and the gain required for lasing originates rather from multi-electronic transitions, which give rise to a broad emission background. We compare the experiment to a …
We report theoretical studies of charge transport in single-stranded DNA in the direction perpendicular to the backbone axis. We find that, if the electrodes which sandwich the DNA have the appropriate spatial width, each nucleotide carries a unique signature due to the different electronic and chemical structure of the four bases. This signature is independent of the nearest-neighbor nucleotides. Furthermore, except for the nucleotides with Guanine and Cytosine bases, we find that the difference in conductance of the nucleotides is large for most orientations of the bases with respect to the …
Recent interest in the physics of non-perturbative light-matter coupling led to the development of solid-state cavity quantum electrodynamics setups in which the interaction energies are comparable with the bare ones. In such a regime the ground state of the coupled system becomes interaction-dependent and is predicted to contain a population of virtual excitations which, notwithstanding having been object of many investigations, remain still unobserved. In this paper we investigate how virtual electronic excitations in quantum wells modify the ground-state charge distribution, and propose two…
Through a non-perturbative quantum theory, we investigate how the quasi-electron excitations of a two-dimensional electron gas are modified by strong coupling to the vacuum field of a microcavity. We show that the electronic dressed states originate from a Fano-like coupling between the bare electron states and the continuum of intersubband cavity polariton excitations. In particular, we calculate the electron spectral function modified by light-matter interactions and its impact on the electronic injection of intersubband cavity polaritons. The domain of validity of the present theoretical re…
We use a quantum path integral approach to describe the behavior of a microwave cavity coupled to a dissipative mesoscopic circuit. We integrate out the mesoscopic electronic degrees of freedom to obtain a cavity effective action at fourth order in the light/matter coupling. By studying the structure of this action, we establish sufficient conditions in which the cavity dynamics can be described with a Lindblad equation. This equation depends on effective parameters set by electronic correlation functions. It reveals that the mesoscopic circuit induces an effective Kerr interaction and two-pho…
We theoretically explore optical bistability for possible signature of all optical switching and their performance in a hybrid quantum optomechanical system comprising of two semiconductor microcavity coupled optically. One of the cavity is driven by an external optical pump laser while the second cavity which contains a quantum dot is indirectly driven by light transmitted from the first cavity. The generated bistable behavior due to optomechanical nonlinearity shows a typical optical switching behavior and it can be controlled by changing the laser power, QD cavity coupling, rocking paramete…
We consider a superconducting microwave cavity capacitively coupled to both a quantum conductor and its electronic reservoirs. We analyze in details how the measurements of the cavity microwave field, which are related to the electronic charge susceptibility, can be used to extract information on the transport properties of the quantum conductor. We show that the asymmetry of the capacitive couplings between the electronic reservoirs and the cavity plays a crucial role in relating optical measurements to transport properties. For asymmetric capacitive couplings, photonic measurements can be us…
After evaporation of the organic solvents, benzene, toluene, and cyclohexane on gold substrates, Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) shows the presence of a remaining adsorbed layer. The different solvent molecules were individually observed at ambient conditions, and their electronic transport properties characterized through the STM in the Break Junction approach. The combination of both techniques reveals, on one hand, that solvents are not fully evaporated over the gold electrode and, secondly, determines the role of the electronic transport of the solvents in molecular electronics.
We show that the topological phase transition for a Kitaev chain embedded in a cavity can be identified by measuring experimentally accessible photon observables such as the Fano factor and the cavity quadrature amplitudes. Moreover, based on density matrix renormalization group numerical calculations, endorsed by an analytical Gaussian approximation for the cavity state, we propose a direct link between those observables and quantum entropy singularities. We study two bipartite entanglement measures, the von Neumann and Rényi entanglement entropies, between light and matter subsystems. Even t…
Topology is familiar mostly from mathematics, but also natural sciences have found its concepts useful. Those concepts have been used to explain several natural phenomena in biology and physics, and they are particularly relevant for the electronic structure description of topological insulators and graphene systems. Here, we introduce topologically distinct graphene forms - graphene spirals - and employ density-functional theory to investigate their geometric and electronic properties. We found that the spiral topology gives rise to an intrinsic Rashba spin-orbit splitting. Through a Hamilton…
The coupling between defects in diamond and a superconducting microwave resonator is studied in the nonlinear regime. Both negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy and P1 defects are explored. The measured cavity mode response exhibits strong nonlinearity near a spin resonance. Data is compared with theoretical predictions and a good agreement is obtained in a wide range of externally controlled parameters. The nonlinear effect under study in the current paper is expected to play a role in any cavity-based magnetic resonance imaging technique and to impose a fundamental limit upon its sensitivity.
Indiana University（印第安纳大学）；Harvard University（哈佛大学）；Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (CSIC)（马德里材料科学研究所（CSIC））；University of Kentucky（肯塔基大学）
We derive a general criterion for determining the onset of superradiant phase transition in electronic bands coupled to a cavity field, with possibly electron-electron interactions. For longitudinal superradiance in 2D or genuine 1D systems, we prove that it is always prevented, thereby extending existing no-go theorems. Instead, a superradiant phase transition can occur to a nonuniform transverse cavity field and we give specific examples in non-interacting models, either through Fermi surface nesting or parabolic band touching. Investigating the resulting time-reversal symmetry breaking supe…
We analyze quantum effects occurring in optomechanical systems where the coupling between an optical mode and a mechanical mode is quadratic in displacement (membrane-in-the-middle geometry). We show that it is possible to observe quantum effects in these systems without achieving the single-photon strong coupling regime. We find that zero-point energy causes a mechanical frequency shift, and we propose an experimental way to measure it. Further, we show that it is possible to determine the phonon statistics from the cavity transmission, and propose a way to infer the resonator's temperature b…
