Thermal and electrostatic tuning of surface phonon-polaritons in LaAlO₃/SrTiO₃ heterostructures

Phonon polaritons are promising for infrared applications due to a strong light-matter coupling and subwavelength energy confinement they offer. Yet, the spectral narrowness of the phonon bands and difficulty to tune the phonon polariton properties hinder further progress in this field. SrTiO3 – a prototype perovskite oxide - has recently attracted attention due to two prominent far-infrared phonon polaritons bands, albeit without any tuning reported so far. Here we show, using cryogenic infrared near-field microscopy, that long-propagating surface phonon polaritons are present both in bare SrTiO3 and in LaAlO3/SrTiO3 heterostructures hosting a two-dimensional electron gas. The presence of the two-dimensional electron gas increases dramatically the thermal variation of the upper limit of the surface phonon polariton band due to temperature dependent polaronic screening of the surface charge carriers. Furthermore, we demonstrate a tunability of the upper surface phonon polariton frequency in LaAlO3/SrTiO3 via electrostatic gating. Our results suggest that oxide interfaces are a new platform bridging unconventional electronics and long-wavelength nanophotonics.</p

Altimetry for the future: Building on 25 years of progress

In 2018 we celebrated 25 years of development of radar altimetry, and the progress achieved by this methodology in the fields of global and coastal oceanography, hydrology, geodesy and cryospheric sciences. Many symbolic major events have celebrated these developments, e.g., in Venice, Italy, the 15th (2006) and 20th (2012) years of progress and more recently, in 2018, in Ponta Delgada, Portugal, 25 Years of Progress in Radar Altimetry. On this latter occasion it was decided to collect contributions of scientists, engineers and managers involved in the worldwide altimetry community to depict the state of altimetry and propose recommendations for the altimetry of the future. This paper summarizes contributions and recommendations that were collected and provides guidance for future mission design, research activities, and sustainable operational radar altimetry data exploitation. Recommendations provided are fundamental for optimizing further scientific and operational advances of oceanographic observations by altimetry, including requirements for spatial and temporal resolution of altimetric measurements, their accuracy and continuity. There are also new challenges and new openings mentioned in the paper that are particularly crucial for observations at higher latitudes, for coastal oceanography, for cryospheric studies and for hydrology. The paper starts with a general introduction followed by a section on Earth System Science including Ocean Dynamics, Sea Level, the Coastal Ocean, Hydrology, the Cryosphere and Polar Oceans and the ‘‘Green” Ocean, extending the frontier from biogeochemistry to marine ecology. Applications are described in a subsequent section, which covers Operational Oceanography, Weather, Hurricane Wave and Wind Forecasting, Climate projection. Instruments’ development and satellite missions’ evolutions are described in a fourth section. A fifth section covers the key observations that altimeters provide and their potential complements, from other Earth observation measurements to in situ data. Section 6 identifies the data and methods and provides some accuracy and resolution requirements for the wet tropospheric correction, the orbit and other geodetic requirements, the Mean Sea Surface, Geoid and Mean Dynamic Topography, Calibration and Validation, data accuracy, data access and handling (including the DUACS system). Section 7 brings a transversal view on scales, integration, artificial intelligence, and capacity building (education and training). Section 8 reviews the programmatic issues followed by a conclusion

Altimetry for the future: building on 25 years of progress

In 2018 we celebrated 25 years of development of radar altimetry, and the progress achieved by this methodology in the fields of global and coastal oceanography, hydrology, geodesy and cryospheric sciences. Many symbolic major events have celebrated these developments, e.g., in Venice, Italy, the 15th (2006) and 20th (2012) years of progress and more recently, in 2018, in Ponta Delgada, Portugal, 25 Years of Progress in Radar Altimetry. On this latter occasion it was decided to collect contributions of scientists, engineers and managers involved in the worldwide altimetry community to depict the state of altimetry and propose recommendations for the altimetry of the future. This paper summarizes contributions and recommendations that were collected and provides guidance for future mission design, research activities, and sustainable operational radar altimetry data exploitation. Recommendations provided are fundamental for optimizing further scientific and operational advances of oceanographic observations by altimetry, including requirements for spatial and temporal resolution of altimetric measurements, their accuracy and continuity. There are also new challenges and new openings mentioned in the paper that are particularly crucial for observations at higher latitudes, for coastal oceanography, for cryospheric studies and for hydrology. The paper starts with a general introduction followed by a section on Earth System Science including Ocean Dynamics, Sea Level, the Coastal Ocean, Hydrology, the Cryosphere and Polar Oceans and the “Green” Ocean, extending the frontier from biogeochemistry to marine ecology. Applications are described in a subsequent section, which covers Operational Oceanography, Weather, Hurricane Wave and Wind Forecasting, Climate projection. Instruments’ development and satellite missions’ evolutions are described in a fourth section. A fifth section covers the key observations that altimeters provide and their potential complements, from other Earth observation measurements to in situ data. Section 6 identifies the data and methods and provides some accuracy and resolution requirements for the wet tropospheric correction, the orbit and other geodetic requirements, the Mean Sea Surface, Geoid and Mean Dynamic Topography, Calibration and Validation, data accuracy, data access and handling (including the DUACS system). Section 7 brings a transversal view on scales, integration, artificial intelligence, and capacity building (education and training). Section 8 reviews the programmatic issues followed by a conclusion

Ultracompact Binary Permanent Rare-Earth Magnet with 1.25-T Center Field and Fast-Decaying Stray Field

International audienceWe present a very-compact bicomponent-permanent-magnet design capable of generating 1.25 T in a small volume, significantly above the 0.6 T available from a single uniformly magnetized permanent magnet. In addition to the enhanced maximum field, our design drastically limits the stray field present around a standard permanent magnet. These features make it suitable for retrofitting existing experiments with a substantial magnetic field, in particular, scanning probes and optical, Raman, and photoemission spectroscopy, in diverse environments, from ambient to ultrahigh vacuum and over a wide temperature range

Thermal and electrostatic tuning of surface phonon-polaritons in LaAlO3/SrTiO3 heterostructures

Abstract Phonon polaritons are promising for infrared applications due to a strong light-matter coupling and subwavelength energy confinement they offer. Yet, the spectral narrowness of the phonon bands and difficulty to tune the phonon polariton properties hinder further progress in this field. SrTiO3 – a prototype perovskite oxide - has recently attracted attention due to two prominent far-infrared phonon polaritons bands, albeit without any tuning reported so far. Here we show, using cryogenic infrared near-field microscopy, that long-propagating surface phonon polaritons are present both in bare SrTiO3 and in LaAlO3/SrTiO3 heterostructures hosting a two-dimensional electron gas. The presence of the two-dimensional electron gas increases dramatically the thermal variation of the upper limit of the surface phonon polariton band due to temperature dependent polaronic screening of the surface charge carriers. Furthermore, we demonstrate a tunability of the upper surface phonon polariton frequency in LaAlO3/SrTiO3 via electrostatic gating. Our results suggest that oxide interfaces are a new platform bridging unconventional electronics and long-wavelength nanophotonics

Highly confined epsilon-near-zero and surface phonon polaritons in SrTiO3 membranes.

Recent theoretical studies have suggested that transition metal perovskite oxide membranes can enable surface phonon polaritons in the infrared range with low loss and much stronger subwavelength confinement than bulk crystals. Such modes, however, have not been experimentally observed so far. Here, using a combination of far-field Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and near-field synchrotron infrared nanospectroscopy (SINS) imaging, we study the phonon polaritons in a 100 nm thick freestanding crystalline membrane of SrTiO3 transferred on metallic and dielectric substrates. We observe a symmetric-antisymmetric mode splitting giving rise to epsilon-near-zero and Berreman modes as well as highly confined (by a factor of 10) propagating phonon polaritons, both of which result from the deep-subwavelength thickness of the membranes. Theoretical modeling based on the analytical finite-dipole model and numerical finite-difference methods fully corroborate the experimental results. Our work reveals the potential of oxide membranes as a promising platform for infrared photonics and polaritonics

Resonant Inelastic Scattering Data of Bi2212

AbstractResonant Inelastic Scattering Data of Bi221

Infrared nano-imaging of Dirac magnetoexcitons in graphene

Magnetic fields can have profound effects on the motion of electrons in quantum materials. Two-dimensional electron systems subject to strong magnetic fields are expected to exhibit quantized Hall conductivity, chiral edge currents and distinctive collective modes referred to as magnetoplasmons and magnetoexcitons. Generating these propagating collective modes in charge-neutral samples and imaging them at their native nanometre length scales have thus far been experimentally elusive. Here we visualize propagating magnetoexciton polaritons at their native length scales and report their magnetic-field-tunable dispersion in near-charge-neutral graphene. Imaging these collective modes and their associated nano-electro-optical responses allows us to identify polariton-modulated optical and photo-thermal electric effects at the sample edges, which are the most pronounced near charge neutrality. Our work is enabled by innovations in cryogenic near-field optical microscopy techniques that allow for the nano-imaging of the near-field responses of two-dimensional materials under magnetic fields up to 7 T. This nano-magneto-optics approach allows us to explore and manipulate magnetopolaritons in specimens with low carrier doping via harnessing high magnetic fields