Abstract-Grating-Graphene Metamaterial as a Platform for Terahertz Nonlinear Photonics

 

Jan-Christoph Deinert, David Alcaraz Iranzo, Raúl Pérez, Xiaoyu Jia, Hassan A. Hafez, Igor Ilyakov, Nilesh Awari, Min Chen, Mohammed Bawatna, Alexey N. Ponomaryov, Semyon Germanskiy, Mischa Bonn, Frank H.L. Koppens, Dmitry Turchinovich, Michael Gensch, Sergey Kovalev,  Klaas-Jan Tielrooij 

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsnano.0c08106

Nonlinear optics is an increasingly important field for scientific and technological applications, owing to its relevance and potential for optical and optoelectronic technologies. Currently, there is an active search for suitable nonlinear material systems with efficient conversion and a small material footprint. Ideally, the material system should allow for chip integration and room-temperature operation. Two-dimensional materials are highly interesting in this regard. Particularly promising is graphene, which has demonstrated an exceptionally large nonlinearity in the terahertz regime. Yet, the light–matter interaction length in two-dimensional materials is inherently minimal, thus limiting the overall nonlinear optical conversion efficiency. Here, we overcome this challenge using a metamaterial platform that combines graphene with a photonic grating structure providing field enhancement. We measure terahertz third-harmonic generation in this metamaterial and obtain an effective third-order nonlinear susceptibility with a magnitude as large as 3 × 10–8 m2/V2, or 21 esu, for a fundamental frequency of 0.7 THz. This nonlinearity is 50 times larger than what we obtain for graphene without grating. Such an enhancement corresponds to a third-harmonic signal with an intensity that is 3 orders of magnitude larger due to the grating. Moreover, we demonstrate a field conversion efficiency for the third harmonic of up to ∼1% using a moderate field strength of ∼30 kV/cm. Finally, we show that harmonics beyond the third are enhanced even more strongly, allowing us to observe signatures of up to the ninth harmonic. Grating-graphene metamaterials thus constitute an outstanding platform for commercially viable, CMOS-compatible, room-temperature, chip-integrated, THz nonlinear conversion applications.

Abstract-Ultrafast terahertz magnetometry

Wentao Zhang, Pablo Maldonado, Zuanming Jin, Tom S. Seifert, Jacek Arabski, Guy Schmerber, Eric Beaurepaire, Mischa Bonn, Tobias Kampfrath, Peter M. Oppeneer, Dmitry Turchinovich

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17935-6

A material’s magnetic state and its dynamics are of great fundamental research interest and are also at the core of a wide plethora of modern technologies. However, reliable access to magnetization dynamics in materials and devices on the technologically relevant ultrafast timescale, and under realistic device-operation conditions, remains a challenge. Here, we demonstrate a method of ultrafast terahertz (THz) magnetometry, which gives direct access to the (sub-)picosecond magnetization dynamics even in encapsulated materials or devices in a contact-free fashion, in a fully calibrated manner, and under ambient conditions. As a showcase for this powerful method, we measure the ultrafast magnetization dynamics in a laser-excited encapsulated iron film. Our measurements reveal and disentangle distinct contributions originating from (i) incoherent hot-magnon-driven magnetization quenching and (ii) coherent acoustically-driven modulation of the exchange interaction in iron, paving the way to technologies utilizing ultrafast heat-free control of magnetism. High sensitivity and relative ease of experimental arrangement highlight the promise of ultrafast THz magnetometry for both fundamental studies and the technological applications of magnetism.

New method to track ultrafast change of magnetic state

In the new study together with their international colleagues, Professor Dr Dmitry Turchinovich (left) and Wentao Zhang demonstrate how the ultrafast change of magnetic states can be measured. Credit: Bielefeld University/M.-D. Müller

https://phys.org/news/2020-08-method-track-ultrafast-magnetic-state.html

An international team of physicists from Bielefeld University, Uppsala University, the University of Strasbourg, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, ETH Zurich, and the Free University Berlin have developed a precise method to measure the ultrafast change of a magnetic state in materials. They do this by observing the emission of terahertz radiation that necessarily accompanies such a magnetization change. Their study, titled "Ultrafast terahertz magnetometry," is being published today in Nature Communications.

Magnetic memories are not just acquiring higher and higher capacity by shrinking the size of magnetic bits, they are also getting faster. In principle, the magnetic bit can be flipped—that is, it can change its state from one to zero or vice versa—on an extremely fast timescale of shorter than one picosecond. One picosecond (1 ps = 10-12 s) is one millionth of one millionth of a second. This could allow the operation of magnetic memories at terahertz (1 THz = 1 x 1012 hertz) switching frequencies, corresponding to extremely high terabit per second (Tbit/s) data rates.

"The actual challenge is to be able to detect such a magnetization change quickly and sensitively enough," explains Dr. Dmitry Turchinovich, professor of physics at Bielefeld University and the leader of this study. "The existing methods of ultrafast magnetometry all suffer from certain significant drawbacks such as, for example, operation only under ultrahigh vacuum conditions, the inability to measure on encapsulated materials, and so on. Our idea was to use the basic principle of electrodynamics. This states that a change in the magnetization of a material must result in the emission of electromagnetic radiation containing the full information on this magnetization change. If the magnetization in a material changes on a picosecond timescale, then the emitted radiation will belong to the terahertz frequency range. The problem is, that this radiation, known as 'magnetic dipole emission,' is very weak, and can be easily obscured by light emission of other origins."

As this illustration shows, the researchers were able to measure the magnetization dynamics in the iron nanofilm caused by ultrafast electronic and acoustic processes. Credit: Bielefeld University/W. Zhang

Wentao Zhang, a Ph.D. student in the lab of Professor Dmitry Turchinovich, and the first author of the published paper says: "It took us time, but finally we succeeded in isolating precisely this magnetic dipole terahertz emission that allowed us to reliably reconstruct the ultrafast magnetization dynamics in our samples: encapsulated iron nanofilms."

In their experiments, the researchers sent very short pulses of laser light onto the iron nanofilms, causing them to demagnetize very quickly. At the same time, they were collecting the terahertz light emitted during such a demagnetization process. The analysis of this terahertz emission yielded the precise temporal evolution of a magnetic state in the iron film.

"Once our analysis was finished, we realized that we actually saw far more than what we had expected," continues Dmitry Turchinovich. "It has already been known for some time that iron can demagnetize very quickly when illuminated by laser light. But what we also saw was a reasonably small, but a very clear additional signal in magnetization dynamics. This got us all very excited. This signal came from the demagnetization in iron—actually driven by the propagation of a very fast pulse of sound through our sample. Where did this sound come from? Very easy: when the iron film absorbed the laser light, it not only demagnetized, it also became hot. As we know, most materials expand when they get hot—and this expansion of the iron nanofilm launched a pulse of terahertz ultrasound within our sample structure. This sound pulse was bouncing back and forth between the sample boundaries, internal and external, like the echo between the walls of a big hall. And each time this echo passed through the iron nanofilm, the pressure of sound moved the iron atoms a little bit, and this further weakened the magnetism in the material." This effect has never been observed before on such an ultrafast timescale.

"We are very happy that we could see this acoustically-driven ultrafast magnetization signal so clearly, and that it was so relatively strong. It was amazing that detecting it with THz radiation, which has a sub-mm wavelength, worked so well, because the expansion in the iron film is only tens of femtometres (1 fm = 10-15 m) which is ten orders of magnitude smaller," says Dr. Peter M. Oppeneer, a professor of physics at Uppsala University, who led the theoretical part of this study. Dr. Pablo Maldonado, a colleague of Peter M. Oppeneer who performed the numerical calculations that were crucial for explaining the observations in this work, adds: "What I find extremely exciting is an almost perfect match between the experimental data and our first-principles theoretical calculations. This confirms that our experimental method of ultrafast terahertz magnetometry is indeed very accurate and also sensitive enough, because we were able to distinguish clearly between the ultrafast magnetic signals of different origins: electronic and acoustic."

The remaining co-authors of this publication have dedicated it to the memory of their colleague and a pioneer in the field of ultrafast magnetism, Dr. Eric Beaurepaire from the University of Strasbourg. He was one of the originators of this study, but passed away during its final stages.

Abstract-Mid-infrared, long-wave infrared, and terahertz photonics: introduction

Ravinder K. Jain, Anthony J. Hoffman, Peter Uhd Jepsen, Peter Q Liu, Dmitry Turchinovich, and Miriam Serena Vitiello

https://www.osapublishing.org/oe/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-28-9-14169

This feature issue presents recent progress in long-wavelength photonics, focusing on wavelengths that span the mid-infrared (3–50 µm), the long-wavelength infrared (30–60 µm), and the terahertz (60–300 µm) portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The papers in this feature issue report recent progress in the generation, manipulation, detection, and use of light across this long-wave region of the “photonics spectrum,” including novel sources and cutting edge advances in detectors, long-wavelength non-linear processes, optical metamaterials and metasurfaces, and molecular spectroscopy. The range of topics covered in this feature issue provide an excellent insight into the expanding interest in long-wavelength photonics, which could open new possibilities for basic research and applications in industries that span health, environmental, and security.

© 2020 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

Abstract-Dynamical Control over Terahertz Electromagnetic Interference Shielding with 2D Ti3C2Ty MXene by Ultrafast Optical Pulses

Guangjiang Li,  Naaman Amer,  Hassan A. Hafez, Shuohan Huang, Dmitry Turchinovich, Vadym N. Mochalin,  Frank A. Hegmann,  Lyubov V. Titova,

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b04404 

High electrical conductivity and strong absorption of electromagnetic radiation in the terahertz (THz) frequency range by metallic 2D MXene Ti3C2Ty make it a promising material for electromagnetic interference shielding, THz detectors, and transparent conducting electrodes. Here, we demonstrate that ultrafast optical pulses with wavelengths straddling the visible range (400 and 800 nm) induce transient broad-band THz transparency in the MXene that persists for nanoseconds. We demonstrate that optically induced transient THz transparency is independent of temperature from 95 to 290 K. This discovery opens new possibilities for development of switchable electromagnetic interference shielding materials and devices that can be rendered partially transparent on demand for transmitting THz signals, or for designing new THz devices such as sensitive optically gated detectors.

Graphene hits the right note at high frequencies

Fig. 1. Graphene converts electronic signals with frequencies in the gigahertz range extremely efficiently into signals with several times higher frequency. (Image credit: Juniks/HZDR.).

Cordelia Sealy
https://www.materialstoday.com/carbon/news/graphene-hits-the-right-note-at-high-frequencies/

Graphene holds the potential to deliver a new generation of ultrafast electronic devices. Current silicon technology can achieve clock rates – a measure of how fast devices can switch – of several hundred gigahertz (GHz). Graphene could achieve clock rates up to a thousand times faster, propelling electronics into the terahertz (THz) range. But, until now, graphene’s ability to convert oscillating electromagnetic signals into higher frequency modes has been just a theoretical prediction.

Now researchers from the Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden Rossendorf (HZDR) and University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), in collaboration with the director of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P) Mischa Bonn and other researchers, have shown that graphene can covert high frequency gigahertz signals into the terahertz range [Hafez et al., Nature (2018), https://doi.org/ 10.1038/s41586-018-0508-1].

“We have been able to provide the first direct proof of frequency multiplication from gigahertz to terahertz in a graphene monolayer and to generate electronic signals in the terahertz range with remarkable efficiency,” explain Michael Gensch of HZDR and Dmitry Turchinovich of UDE.

Using the novel superconducting accelerator TELBE terahertz radiation source at HZDR’s ELBE Center for High-Power Radiation Sources, the researchers bombarded chemical vapor deposition (CVD)-produced graphene with electromagnetic pulses in the frequency range 300–680 GHz. As previous theoretical calculations have predicted, the results show that graphene is able to convert these pulses into signals with three, five, or seven times the initial frequency, reaching the terahertz range (Fig. 1).

“We were not only able to demonstrate a long-predicted effect in graphene experimentally for the first time, but also to understand it quantitatively at the same time,” points out Turchinovich.

By doping the graphene, the researchers created a high proportion of free electrons or a so-called Fermi liquid. When an external oscillating field excites these free electrons, rather like a normal liquid, they heat up and share their energy with surrounding electrons. The hot electrons form a vapor-like state, just like an evaporating liquid. When the hot Fermi vapor phase cools, it returns to its liquid form extremely quickly. The transition back and forth between these vapor and liquid phases in graphene induces a corresponding change in its conductivity. This very rapid oscillation in conductivity drives the frequency multiplication effect.

“In theory, [this] should allow clock rates up to a thousand times faster than today’s silicon-based electronics,” say Gensch and Turchinovich.

The conversion efficiency of graphene is at least 7–18 orders of magnitude more efficient than other electronic materials, the researchers point out. Since the effect has been demonstrated with mass-produced CVD graphene, they believe there are no real obstacles to overcome other than the engineering challenge of integrating graphene into circuits.

“Our discovery is groundbreaking,” says Bonn. “We have demonstrated that carbon-based electronics can operate extremely efficiently at ultrafast rates. Ultrafast hybrid components made of graphene and traditional semiconductors are also now conceivable.”

Nathalie Vermeulen, professor in the Brussels Photonics group (B-PHOT) at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Belgium, agrees that the work is a major breakthrough.

“The nonlinear-optical physics of graphene is an insufficiently understood field, with experimental results often differing from theoretical predictions,” she says. “These new insights, however, shine new light on the nonlinear-optical behavior of graphene in the terahertz regime.”

The researchers’ experimental findings are clearly supported by corresponding theory, Vermeulen adds, which is very convincing.

“It is not often that major advances in fundamental scientific understanding and practical applications go hand in hand, but I believe it is the case here,” she says. “The demonstration of such efficient high-harmonic terahertz generation at room temperature is very powerful and paves the way for concrete application possibilities.”

The advance could extend the functionality of graphene transistors into high-frequency optoelectronic applications and opens up the possibility of similar behavior in other two-dimensional Dirac materials. Marc Dignam of Queen’s University in Canada is also positive about the technological innovations that the demonstration of monolayer graphene’s nonlinear response to terahertz fields could open up.

“The experiments are performed at room temperature in air and, given the relatively short scattering time, it is evident that harmonic generation will occur for relatively moderate field amplitudes, even in samples that are not particularly pristine,” he points out. “This indicates that such harmonic generation could find its way into future devices, once higher-efficiency guiding structures, such as waveguides, are employed.”

He believes that the key to the success of the work is the low-noise, multi-cycle terahertz source (TELBE) used by the researchers. However, Dignam is less convinced by the team’s theoretical explanation of graphene’s nonlinear response. No doubt these exciting results will spur further microscopic theoretical investigations examining carrier dynamics in graphene in more detail.

This article was originally published in Nano Today 23 (2018) 2-3. 

Abstract-Extremely efficient terahertz high-harmonic generation in graphene by hot Dirac fermions

Hassan A. Hafez, Sergey Kovalev, Jan-Christoph Deinert, Zoltán Mics, Bertram Green, Nilesh Awari, Min Chen, Semyon Germanskiy, Ulf Lehnert, Jochen Teichert, Zhe Wang, Klaas-Jan Tielrooij, Zhaoyang Liu, Zongping Chen, Akimitsu Narita, Klaus Müllen, Mischa Bonn, Michael Gensch,  Dmitry Turchinovich

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0508-1

Multiple optical harmonic generation—the multiplication of photon energy as a result of nonlinear interaction between light and matter—is a key technology in modern electronics and optoelectronics, because it allows the conversion of optical or electronic signals into signals with much higher frequency, and the generation of frequency combs. Owing to the unique electronic band structure of graphene, which features massless Dirac fermions, it has been repeatedly predicted that optical harmonic generation in graphene should be particularly efficient at the technologically important terahertz frequencies. However, these predictions have yet to be confirmed experimentally under technologically relevant operation conditions. Here we report the generation of terahertz harmonics up to the seventh order in single-layer graphene at room temperature and under ambient conditions, driven by terahertz fields of only tens of kilovolts per centimetre, and with field conversion efficiencies in excess of 10−3, 10−4 and 10−5 for the third, fifth and seventh terahertz harmonics, respectively. These conversion efficiencies are remarkably high, given that the electromagnetic interaction occurs in a single atomic layer. The key to such extremely efficient generation of terahertz high harmonics in graphene is the collective thermal response of its background Dirac electrons to the driving terahertz fields. The terahertz harmonics, generated via hot Dirac fermion dynamics, were observed directly in the time domain as electromagnetic field oscillations at these newly synthesized higher frequencies. The effective nonlinear optical coefficients of graphene for the third, fifth and seventh harmonics exceed the respective nonlinear coefficients of typical solids by 7–18 orders of magnitude. Our results provide a direct pathway to highly efficient terahertz frequency synthesis using the present generation of graphene electronics, which operate at much lower fundamental frequencies of only a few hundreds of gigahertz.

Rice U. lab finds evidence of matter-matter coupling

MIKE WILLIAMS
http://news.rice.edu/2018/08/23/rice-u-lab-finds-evidence-of-matter-matter-coupling/

HOUSTON – (Aug. 23, 2018) – After their recent pioneering experiments to couple light and matter to an extreme degree, Rice University scientists decided to look for a similar effect in matter alone. They didn’t expect to find it so soon.

Rice physicist Junichiro Kono, graduate student Xinwei Li and their international colleagues have discovered the first example of Dicke cooperativity in a matter-matter system, a result reported in Science this week.

Rice University scientists observed Dicke cooperativity in a magnetic crystal in which two types of spins, in iron (blue arrows) and erbium (red arrows), interacted with each other. The iron spins were excited to form a wave-like object called a spin wave; the erbium spins precessing in a magnetic field (B) behaved like two-level atoms. Illustration by Xinwei Li

The discovery could help advance the understanding of spintronics and quantum magnetism, Kono said. On the spintronics side, he said the work will lead to faster information processing with lower power consumption and will contribute to the development of spin-based quantum computing. The team’s findings on quantum magnetism will lead to a deeper understanding of the phases of matter induced by many-body interactions at the atomic scale.

Instead of using light to trigger interactions in a quantum well, a system that produced new evidence of ultrastrong light-matter coupling earlier this year, the Kono lab at Rice used a magnetic field to prompt cooperativity among the spins within a crystalline compound made primarily of iron and erbium.

“This is an emerging subject in condensed matter physics,” Kono said. “There’s a long history in atomic and molecular physics of looking for the phenomenon of ultrastrong cooperative coupling. In our case, we’d already found a way to make light and condensed matter interact and hybridize, but what we’re reporting here is more exotic.”

Dicke cooperativity, named for physicist Robert Dicke, happens when incoming radiation causes a collection of atomic dipoles to couple, like gears in a motor that don’t actually touch. Dicke’s early work set the stage for the invention of lasers, the discovery of cosmic background radiation in the universe and the development of lock-in amplifiers used by scientists and engineers.
                                              

Xinwei Li, left, and Junichiro Kono of Rice University led an international effort to find the first instance of Dicke cooperativity in a matter-matter system. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

“Dicke was an unusually productive physicist,” Kono said. “He had many high-impact papers and accomplishments in almost all areas of physics. The particular Dicke phenomenon that’s relevant to our work is related to superradiance, which he introduced in 1954. The idea is that if you have a collection of atoms, or spins, they can work together in light-matter interaction to make spontaneous emission coherent. This was a very strange idea.

“When you stimulate many atoms within a small volume, one atom produces a photon that immediately interacts with another atom in the excited state,” Kono said. “That atom produces another photon. Now you have coherent superposition of two photons.

“This happens between every pair of atoms within the volume and produces macroscopic polarization that eventually leads to a burst of coherent light called superradiance,” he said.

Taking light out of the equation meant the Kono lab had to find another way to excite the material’s dipoles, the compass-like magnetic force inherent in every atom, and prompt them to align. Because the lab is uniquely equipped for such experiments, when the test material showed up, Kono and Li were ready.

“The sample was provided by my colleague (and co-author) Shixun Cao at Shanghai University,” Kono said. Characterization tests with a small or no magnetic field performed by another co-author, Dmitry Turchinovich of the University of Duisburg-Essen, drew little response.

“But Dmitry is a good friend, and he knows we have a special experimental setup that combines terahertz spectroscopy, low temperatures and high magnetic field,” Kono said. “He was curious to know what would happen if we did the measurements.”

“Because we have some experience in this field, we got our initial data, identified some interesting details in it and thought there was something more we could explore in depth,” Li added.

“But we certainly didn’t predict this,” Kono said.

Li said that to show cooperativity, the magnetic components of the compound had to mimic the two essential ingredients in a standard light-atom coupling system where Dicke cooperativity was originally proposed: one a species of spins that can be excited into a wave-like object that simulates the light wave, and another with quantum energy levels that would shift with the applied magnetic field and simulate the atoms.

“Within a single orthoferrite compound, on one side the iron ions can be triggered to form a spin wave at a particular frequency,” Li said. “On the other side, we used the electron paramagnetic resonance of the erbium ions, which forms a two-level quantum structure that interacts with the spin wave.”

While the lab’s powerful magnet tuned the energy levels of the erbium ions, as detected by the terahertz spectroscope, it did not initially show strong interactions with the iron spin wave at room temperature. But the interactions started to appear at lower temperatures, seen in a spectroscopic measurement of coupling strength known as vacuum Rabi splitting.

Chemically doping the erbium with yttrium brought it in line with the observation and showed Dicke cooperativity in the magnetic interactions. “The way the coupling strength increased matches in an excellent manner with Dicke’s early predictions,” Li said. “But here, light is out of the picture and the coupling is matter-matter in nature.”

“The interaction we’re talking about is really atomistic,” Kono said. “We show two types of spin interacting in a single material. That’s a quantum mechanical interaction, rather than the classical mechanics we see in light-matter coupling. This opens new possibilities for not only understanding but also controlling and predicting novel phases of condensed matter.”

Co-authors of the paper are Motoaki Bamba, an associate professor at Osaka University; graduate students Ning Yuan, Maolin Xiang and Kai Xu and professors Zuanming Jin, Wei Ren and Guohong Ma at Shanghai University; Rice alumnus Qi Zhang, a research fellow at Argonne National Laboratory; and Yage Zhao, an undergraduate student at Peking University and former exchange student at Rice. Kono is a professor of electrical and computer engineering, of physics and astronomy, and of materials science and nanoengineering.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, the PRESTO program of the Japan Science and Technology Agency, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science’s KAKENHI program, the ImPACT Program of the Government of Japan’s Council for Science, Technology and Innovation, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, German Research Foundation,the European Commission and the Max Planck Society.

Read the abstract at http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aat5162

A boost for graphene-based light detectors: Photoexcited graphene puzzle solved

Light detection and control lies at the heart of many modern device applications, such as the camera you have in your phone. Using graphene as a light-sensitive material for light detectors can offer significant improvements with respect to materials being used now. For example, graphene can detect light of almost any color, and it gives an extremely fast electronic response within one millionth of a millionth of a second. Thus, in order to properly design graphene-based light detectors it is crucial to understand the processes that take place inside the graphene after it absorbs light

Schematic representation of the ultrafast optical pump - terahertz probe experiment, where the optical pump induces electron heating and the terahertz pulse is sensitive to the conductivity of graphene directly after this heating process, which occurs on a timescale faster than a millionth of a millionth of a second.

Credit: Illustration: Fabien Vialla/ICFO

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180511150442.htm

Light detection and control lies at the heart of many modern device applications, such as the camera you have in your phone. Using graphene as a light-sensitive material for light detectors can offer significant improvements with respect to materials being used nowadays. For example, graphene can detect light of almost any colour, and it gives an extremely fast electronic response within one millionth of a millionth of a second. Thus, in order to properly design graphene-based light detectors it is crucial to understand the processes that take place inside the graphene after it absorbs light.

A team of European scientists including ICFO from Barcelona (Spain), IIT from Genova (Italy), the University of Exeter from Exeter (UK) and Johannes Gutenberg University from Mainz (Germany), have now succeeded in understanding these processes. Published recently in Science Advances, their work gives a thorough explanation of why, in some cases, the graphene conductivity increases after light absorption and in other cases, it decreases. The researchers show that this behaviour correlates with the way in which energy from absorbed light flows to the graphene electrons: After light is absorbed by the graphene, the processes through which graphene electrons heat up happen extremely fast and with a very high efficiency.

For highly doped graphene (where many free electrons are present), ultrafast electron heating leads to carriers with elevated energy -- hot carriers -- which, in turn, leads to a decrease in conductivity. Interestingly enough, for weakly doped graphene (where not so many free electrons are present), electron heating leads to the creation of additional free electrons, and therefore an increase in conductivity. These additional carriers are the direct result of the gapless nature of graphene -- in gapped materials, electron heating does not lead to additional free carriers.

This simple scenario of light-induced electron heating in graphene can explain many observed effects. Aside from describing the conductive properties of the material after light absorption, it can explain carrier multiplication, where -- under specific conditions -- one absorbed light particle (photon) can indirectly generate more than one additional free electron, and thus create an efficient photoresponse within a device.

The results of the paper, in particular, understanding electron heating processes accurately, will definitely mean a great boost in the design and development of graphene-based light detection technology.

This work was funded by the E.C. under Graphene Flagship, as well as a Mineco Young Investigator grant.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Sciences. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Andrea Tomadin, Sam M. Hornett, Hai I. Wang, Evgeny M. Alexeev, Andrea Candini, Camilla Coletti, Dmitry Turchinovich, Mathias Kläui, Mischa Bonn, Frank H. L. Koppens, Euan Hendry, Marco Polini, Klaas-Jan Tielrooij. The ultrafast dynamics and conductivity of photoexcited graphene at different Fermi energies. Science Advances, 2018; 4 (5): eaar5313 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aar5313

Abstract-Coupling between intra- and intermolecular motions in liquid water revealed by two-dimensional terahertz-infrared-visible spectroscopy

Maksim Grechko, Taisuke Hasegawa, Francesco D’Angelo, Hironobu Ito, Dmitry Turchinovich, Yuki Nagata, Mischa Bonn

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03303-y

The interaction between intramolecular and intermolecular degrees of freedom in liquid water underlies fundamental chemical and physical phenomena such as energy dissipation and proton transfer. Yet, it has been challenging to elucidate the coupling between these different types of modes. Here, we report on the direct observation and quantification of the coupling between intermolecular and intramolecular coordinates using two-dimensional, ultra-broadband, terahertz-infrared-visible (2D TIRV) spectroscopy and molecular dynamics calculations. Our study reveals strong coupling of the O-H stretch vibration, independent of the degree of delocalization of this high-frequency mode, to low-frequency intermolecular motions over a wide frequency range from 50 to 250 cm−1, corresponding to both the intermolecular hydrogen bond bending (≈ 60 cm−1) and stretching (≈ 180 cm−1) modes. Our results provide mechanistic insights into the coupling of the O-H stretch vibration to collective, delocalized intermolecular modes.

Abstract- Accurate terahertz spectroscopy of supported thin films by precise substrate thickness correction

Keno L. Krewer, Zoltan Mics, Jacek Arabski, Guy Schmerber, Eric Beaurepaire, Mischa Bonn, and Dmitry Turchinovich

https://www.osapublishing.org/ol/abstract.cfm?uri=ol-43-3-447

We present a new approach for accurate terahertz time-domain spectroscopy of thin films deposited on dielectric substrates. Our approach relies on the simultaneous measurement of film and substrate, allowing for 15 nm—precise determination of the thickness variation between the sample and reference. Our approach allows for unprecedentedly accurate determination of the terahertz conductivity of the thin film. We demonstrate our approach on a 10 nm thin iron film deposited on a 500 μm MgO substrate. We determine the Drude momentum relaxation time in iron to within 0.15 fs uncertainty.

© 2018 Optical Society of America

Abstract-Efficient formation of excitons in a dense electron-hole plasma at room temperature

Andreas Hangleiter, Zuanming Jin, Marina Gerhard, Dimitry Kalincev, Torsten Langer, Heiko Bremers, Uwe Rossow, Martin Koch, Mischa Bonn, and Dmitry Turchinovich

https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.92.241305

Room-temperature electronic properties of semiconductors, especially in the case of higher charge densities, are commonly discussed in terms of single-particle excitations – free electrons and holes. Many-particle effects, such as the formation of excitons (Coulomb-bound electron-hole pairs), are usually seen as low-temperature and low-density phenomena. In this paper, using ultrafast terahertz and photoluminescence measurements, the authors find that under certain conditions typical for wide-band-gap semiconductors, the radiative excitons can be efficiently formed at high charge density and at room temperature. This effect is believed to contribute to the extraordinarily high quantum efficiency of group III nitride light emitters.

 

Commonly, excitons in semiconductors are regarded as a low-temperature, low carrier density phenomenon, becoming unstable as the temperature and carrier density increase. Contrary to the common expectation, our ultrafast conductivity and luminescence measurements in GaInN/GaN quantum wells reveal a highly efficient formation of radiative excitons from a high-density electron-hole plasma at room temperature, and provide a quantitative measure of the exciton fraction to reach more than 40% at a total carrier population as high as                                                                         

∼10cm−21013cm−2Driven by the mass action of electrons and holes, this effect is believed to contribute to the extraordinarily high quantum efficiency of group-III nitride light emitters.