Light-matter interactions and quantum photonics in nano-scale semiconductor structures and devices

Lead Research Organisation: University of Sheffield
Department Name: Physics and Astronomy

Abstract

We propose a Centre-to-Centre consortium formed of 10 academics from the University of Sheffield (USHEF) and the Technical University of Dortmund (TUD) to exploit light-matter interactions in advanced materials, achieving agenda-setting advances in non-linear optics, single photon phenomena and spin-control on the nanoscale. We will study ultra-pure cuprous oxide, atomically thin two-dimensional semiconductors, and III-V semiconductor nano-structures, all at the forefront of modern day research. The collaboration provides major added value to the UK by enabling cutting-edge research themes supported by close interaction with highest quality scientists at TUD, as well as access to their world-leading experimental infrastructure.

The interaction of light and matter is at the heart of a huge range of natural phenomena and applications in physics, chemistry, biology etc. In this project, we will use potentially transformative approaches to harnessing these phenomena by using specially designed nano-structured materials, and exploring non-linear and quantum optical phenomena in micro- and nano-photonic structures. The ambition is to seed and develop new research directions based on enhancing and controlling light-matter interactions in nanoscale structures. To this end we will use a broad base of novel materials including atomically thin layers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), ultra-pure Cu2O, and quantum dots located within III-V semiconductor nano-photonic structures.

The consortium will address three inter-related themes having considerable synergy and sharing of techniques and physics including: non-linear and quantum optics with Rydberg exciton-polaritons in cuprous oxide; valley phenomena in van der Waals heterostructures; ultrafast quantum nano-photonics.

All three themes involve the harnessing of light-matter interactions in novel material systems. Design on the nanoscale is a common theme throughout enabling the discovery of new optical and quantum-optical phenomena. Furthermore, they all rely on the control of the properties of excitons in extreme limits. As well as leading to ground-breaking new physics, the programme has potential to open up long term applications in quantum communications and in spintronic devices to give just two examples.

The highly integrated collaboration programme, exploiting to the full the benefits of the Centre-to-Centre cooperation, will be supported by a total of 60 months of extended visits by postdocs in both directions between Sheffield and Dortmund.

Planned Impact

Our Impact strategy will have four main components as shown below.

1. KNOWLEDGE DISSEMINATION WITHIN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY will be achieved via publications in leading journals including the Nature family, PRL, PRX, Nano Letters etc where all proposers have published extensively in recent years; talks at international conferences and workshops; participation in large-scale UK and international initiatives including (i) the Horizon-2020 FET Graphene Flagship, (ii) UK Quantum Technology Programme through membership of the York Quantum Communications Hub, (iii) EPSRC Photonics Manufacturing Hub, (iv) Horizon-2020 MSCA ITN Spin-NANO, (v) EPSRC Programme Grant in Semiconductor Quantum Photonics led by USHEF (EP/N031776/1), (vi) National Graphene Institute, (vii) Mega-Grant Programmes led by USHEF and TUD respectively in collaboration with research institutions in St Petersburg, (viii) the Quantera EU initiative.

2. KNOWLEDGE AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER AND DIRECT ENGAGEMENT WITH INDUSTRY. Our project concerns fundamental research into 2D materials and quantum photonics with strong potential to impact development of quantum photonic circuits, quantum communications, strongly nonlinear optical devices for photonic applications, and logic elements for spintronic devices. At this stage our industrial engagement strategy will consist of establishing and maintaining long-lasting contacts with relevant industry. This will in part be achieved by closely involving, at project meetings and by direct contact, industrial partners with whom we already have close links. They provide a range of specialist knowledge in advanced experimental hardware [Oxford HighQ (Oxford), Chase Research Cryogenics (Sheffield) - both are project partners (see LoS), Attocube (Munich)], materials [Helia (Livingston), HQGraphene (Groningen)], and quantum technologies [Hitachi (Cambridge), Toshiba, IBM (Zurich), Single Quantum (Delft)].

3. TRAINING OF HIGHLY QUALIFIED PERSONNEL We aim to train 3 postdoctoral researchers at USHEF and at least 3 at TUD, as well as several PhD students at both Centres, to high levels in physics, optics, device fabrication during the course of the grant. All these areas are highly relevant industrially and academically. University-wide career coaching will be available in Sheffield through the Think Ahead programme. We will also make arrangements to allow access for the visiting postdocs from TUD to our career coaching courses at Sheffield. The combination of participation in research at a high level, together with the oral, written and organisational skills, as well as direct involvement with the industrial partners, will prepare outgoing members very well for future careers in industry and academia, of considerable benefit to the UK economy. In the last 10 years the large majority of researchers supervised by the investigators have taken up positions in hi-tech industry (~75% with the remaining 25% in academia) including Toshiba, Intel, Huawei, Attocube, AMRC, NPL, showing the range of skill-sets we transfer to our researchers to be much in demand.

4. PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT We will participate in a variety of outreach activities targeting the general public, school pupils and undergraduates. Within the context of the Centre to Centre proposal we will use our recent experiences to create additional videos for the Quantum Light channel including an animation describing the importance of nonlinear photonics in modern and future technology. The postdocs and PhD students from the USHEF/TUD grouping will be encouraged to participate in the production of the new videos and in the planned USHEF exhibit at the Cheltenham festival in 2021. As well as the science festivals, in-line with current practice, the videos will also be employed at university open days and presentations at high schools, providing a further stimulus for the younger generation to engage with science and physics in their future lives and careers.

Publications

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Makhonin M (2024) Nonlinear Rydberg exciton-polaritons in Cu2O microcavities. in Light, science & applications

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Zotev P (2023) Van der Waals Materials for Applications in Nanophotonics in Laser & Photonics Reviews

 
Description The main result of this work is the study of atomically thin semiconductors such as MoSe2 placed on ultra-thin ferromagnetic films. In one experiment we studies MoSe2 placed on CrBr3, and in the other MoSe2 on EuS. In both cases we see very interesting dynamics of electrons. In MoSe/CrBr3 the electron tunnelling between the MoSe2 and CrBr3 layers becomes spin-dependent thanks to the ferromagnetic order in CrBr3. The results on MoSe2/CrBr3 were published in late 2020 in Nature Communications.


In MoSe2/EuS, we see that MoSe2 becomes heavily charged with electrons coming from EuS. This allows us to enter a very high doping regime in MoSe2 in structures where no electrical contacts are required. Here we study the relationship between spin polarization of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in a monolayer semiconductor, MoSe2, and light-matter interactions modified by a zero-dimensional optical microcavity. We find pronounced spin-susceptibility of the 2DEG to simultaneously enhance and suppress trion-polariton formation in opposite photon helicities. This leads to observation of a giant effective valley Zeeman splitting for trion-polaritons (g-factor > 20), exceeding the purely trionic splitting by over five times. Going further, we observe clear effective optical non-linearity arising from the highly non-linear behavior of the valley-specific strong light-matter coupling regime, and allowing all-optical tuning of the polaritonic Zeeman splitting from 4 to > 10 meV. This work has been published in Nature Photonics 16 (9), 632 (2022).


Single photon emitters in atomically-thin semiconductors can be deterministically positioned using strain induced by underlying nano-structures. In our work we couple monolayer WSe2 to high-refractive-index gallium phosphide dielectric nano-antennas providing both optical enhancement and monolayer deformation. For single photon emitters formed on such nano-antennas, we find very low (femto-Joule) saturation pulse energies and up to 10000 times brighter photoluminescence than in WSe2 placed on low-refractive-index SiO2 pillars. We show that the key to these observations is the increase on average by a factor of 5 of the quantum efficiency of the emitters coupled to the nano-antennas. This further allows us to gain new insights into their photoluminescence dynamics, revealing the roles of the dark exciton reservoir and Auger processes. We also find that the coherence time of such emitters is limited by intrinsic dephasing processes. Our work establishes dielectric nano-antennas as a platform for high-efficiency quantum light generation in monolayer semiconductors. This work has been published in Nature Communications 12(1), 6063 (2022).
Exploitation Route Results are useful for devices using interface between thin semiconductor films and magnetic semiconductors. Also for those working on single photon emitters.
Sectors Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)

Electronics

URL https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-022-01025-8
 
Title Data for Nonlinear Rydberg exciton-polaritons in Cu2O microcavities 
Description Experimental data for the Light: Science & Applications article "Nonlinear Rydberg exciton-polaritons in Cu2O microcavities" 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2024 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL https://orda.shef.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Data_for_Nonlinear_Rydberg_exciton-polaritons_in_Cu2O_micro...
 
Title Data for Nonlinear Rydberg exciton-polaritons in Cu2O microcavities 
Description Experimental data for the Light: Science & Applications article "Nonlinear Rydberg exciton-polaritons in Cu2O microcavities" 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2024 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL https://orda.shef.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Data_for_Nonlinear_Rydberg_exciton-polaritons_in_Cu2O_micro...
 
Title Raw Data for: Spin-order-dependent magneto-elastic coupling in two dimensional antiferromagnetic MnPSe3 observed through Raman spectroscopy 
Description Layered antiferromagnetic materials have recently emerged as an intriguing subset of the two-dimensional family providing a highly accessible regime with prospects for layer-number-dependent magnetism. Furthermore, transition metal phosphorus trichalcogenides, MPX3 (M= transition metal; X= chalcogen) provide a platform on which to investigate fundamental interactions between magnetic and lattice degrees of freedom and further explore the developing fields of spintronics and magnonics. Here, we use a combination of temperature dependent Raman spectroscopy and density functional theory to explore magnetic-ordering-dependent interactions between the manganese spin degree of freedom and lattice vibrations of the non-magnetic sub-lattice via a Kramers-Anderson super-exchange pathway in both bulk, and few-layer, manganese phosphorus triselenide (MnPSe3). We observe a nonlinear temperature dependent shift of phonon modes predominantly associated with the non-magnetic sub-lattice, revealing their non-trivial spin-phonon coupling below the N'eel temperature at 74 K, allowing us to extract mode-specific spin-phonon coupling constants. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2023 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL https://orda.shef.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Raw_Data_for_Spin-order-dependent_magneto-elastic_coupling_...
 
Description Collaboration with the groups of Dr Yue Wang and Prof Thomas Krauss, University of York 
Organisation University of York
Department Department of Physics
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution University of Sheffield team came up with an idea of using layered materials for nano-photonic structures
Collaborator Contribution Dr Yue Wang helped establishing fabrication of photonic structures from transition metal dichalcogenide and other layered materials
Impact Multidisciplinary: physics from Sheffield and device fabrication from York Publication "Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Dimer Nanoantennas for Tailored Light-Matter Interactions", Panaiot G. Zotev*, Yue Wang*, Luca Sortino, Toby Severs Millard, Nic Mullin, Donato Conteduca, Mostafa Shagar, Armando Genco, Jamie K. Hobbs, Thomas F. Krauss, and Alexander I. Tartakovskii, ACS Nano 2022, 16, 4, 6493-6505, https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsnano.2c00802
Start Year 2020
 
Description Collaboration with the theory group of Professor Ivan Shelykh at Rekjavik University, Iceland and ITMO University, St-Petersbsurg 
Organisation ITMO University
Country Russian Federation 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution The experimental studies of photons and polaritons in photonic microcavities, waveguides and lattices. The experimental investigation of strongly interacting hybrid light-matter states for quantum information processing.
Collaborator Contribution Numerical modelling of the experiment. Data analysis and interpretation. Advice on the design of the experiments. Theory of collective photon states in highly nonlinear materials/photonic devices.
Impact Study of polaritons and photons in photonic microcavities, waveguides and lattices of various geometries and materials. Observation of giant trion-polariton nonlinearity in 2D materials. Observation of artificial gauge field acting on photons. Study of nonlinear phase modulation at room temperature Study of spin-orbit coupling. Observation of single photon phase nonlinearity. Construction of CPHASE gate with nonlinear polaritons. Joint publications in various journals. The collaboration is multidisciplinary since it involves the areas of research such as nonlinear and quantum optics, semiconductor physics and technology and physics of many-body phases.
Start Year 2018
 
Description Collaboration with the theory group of Professor Ivan Shelykh at Rekjavik University, Iceland and ITMO University, St-Petersbsurg 
Organisation Reykjavík University
Country Iceland 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution The experimental studies of photons and polaritons in photonic microcavities, waveguides and lattices. The experimental investigation of strongly interacting hybrid light-matter states for quantum information processing.
Collaborator Contribution Numerical modelling of the experiment. Data analysis and interpretation. Advice on the design of the experiments. Theory of collective photon states in highly nonlinear materials/photonic devices.
Impact Study of polaritons and photons in photonic microcavities, waveguides and lattices of various geometries and materials. Observation of giant trion-polariton nonlinearity in 2D materials. Observation of artificial gauge field acting on photons. Study of nonlinear phase modulation at room temperature Study of spin-orbit coupling. Observation of single photon phase nonlinearity. Construction of CPHASE gate with nonlinear polaritons. Joint publications in various journals. The collaboration is multidisciplinary since it involves the areas of research such as nonlinear and quantum optics, semiconductor physics and technology and physics of many-body phases.
Start Year 2018
 
Title Code for Nonlinear Rydberg exciton-polaritons in Cu2O microcavities 
Description code for the Light: Science & Applications article "Nonlinear Rydberg exciton-polaritons in Cu2O microcavities" 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2024 
URL https://orda.shef.ac.uk/articles/software/Code_for_Nonlinear_Rydberg_exciton-polaritons_in_Cu2O_micr...