Electrically tunable quantum confinement of neutral excitons

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Author / Producer

Thureja, Deepankur Imamoglu, Atac

Date

2022-06-09

Publication Type

Journal Article

ETH Bibliography

yes

Citations

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Abstract

Confining particles to distances below their de Broglie wavelength discretizes their motional state. This fundamental effect is observed in many physical systems, ranging from electrons confined in atoms or quantum dots1,2 to ultracold atoms trapped in optical tweezers3,4. In solid-state photonics, a long-standing goal has been to achieve fully tunable quantum confinement of optically active electron–hole pairs, known as excitons. To confine excitons, existing approaches mainly rely on material modulation5, which suffers from poor control over the energy and position of trapping potentials. This has severely impeded the engineering of large-scale quantum photonic systems. Here we demonstrate electrically controlled quantum confinement of neutral excitons in 2D semiconductors. By combining gate-defined in-plane electric fields with inherent interactions between excitons and free charges in a lateral p–i–n junction, we achieve exciton confinement below 10 nm. Quantization of excitonic motion manifests in the measured optical response as a ladder of discrete voltage-dependent states below the continuum. Furthermore, we observe that our confining potentials lead to a strong modification of the relative wave function of excitons. Our technique provides an experimental route towards creating scalable arrays of identical single-photon sources and has wide-ranging implications for realizing strongly correlated photonic phases6,7 and on-chip optical quantum information processors8,9.

Permanent link

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/549299

Publication status

published

External links

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04634-z north_east

Editor

Book title

Journal / series

Volume

606 (7913)

Pages / Article No.

298 - 304

Publisher

Nature

Event

Edition / version

Methods

Software

Geographic location

Date collected

Date created

Subject

Magneto-optics; Nanowires; Photonic devices; Quantum optics; Two-dimensional materials

Organisational unit

03636 - Imamoglu, Atac / Imamoglu, Atac check_circle
03875 - Norris, David J. / Norris, David J. check_circle

Notes

Funding

185902 - QSIT - Quantum Science and Technology (SNF)
178909 - Quantum photonics using van der Waals heterostructures (SNF)
843842 - Light-enabled transport phenomena in van der Waals heterostructures (EC)
165559 - Optical Strong Coupling in Colloidal Quantum Dots (SNF)

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