5,191 research outputs found
Excitonic Dynamical Franz-Keldysh Effect
The Dynamical Franz-Keldysh Effect is exposed by exploring near-bandgap
absorption in the presence of intense THz electric fields. It bridges the gap
between the DC Franz- Keldysh effect and multi-photon absorption and competes
with the THz AC Stark Effect in shifting the energy of the excitonic resonance.
A theoretical model which includes the strong THz field non-perturbatively via
a non-equilibrium Green Functions technique is able to describe the Dynamical
Franz-Keldysh Effect in the presence of excitonic absorption.Comment: 4 pages in revtex with 5 figures included using epsf. Submitted to
Physical Review Letter
Kinetics of four-wave mixing for a 2D magneto-plasma in strong magnetic fields
We investigate the femtosecond kinetics of an optically excited 2D
magneto-plasma at intermediate and high densities under a strong magnetic field
perpendicular to the quantum well (QW). We assume an additional weak lateral
confinement which lifts the degeneracy of the Landau levels partially. We
calculate the femtosecond dephasing and relaxation kinetics of the laser pulse
excited magneto-plasma due to bare Coulomb potential scattering, because
screening is under these conditions of minor importance. In particular the
time-resolved and time-integrated four-wave mixing (FWM) signals are calculated
by taking into account three Landau subbands in both the valance and the
conduction band assuming an electron-hole symmetry. The FWM signals exhibit
quantum beats mainly with twice the cyclotron frequency. Contrary to general
expectations, we find no pronounced slowing down of the dephasing with
increasing magnetic field. On the contrary, one obtains a decreasing dephasing
time because of the increase of the Coulomb matrix elements and the number of
states in a given Landau subband. In the situation when the loss of scattering
channels exceeds these increasing effects, one gets a slight increase at the
dephasing time. However, details of the strongly modulated scattering kinetics
depend sensitively on the detuning, the plasma density, and the spectral pulse
width relative to the cyclotron frequency.Comment: 13 pages, in RevTex format, 10 figures, Phys. Rev B in pres
Relaxation properties of the quantum kinetics of carrier-LO-phonon interaction in quantum wells and quantum dots
The time evolution of optically excited carriers in semiconductor quantum
wells and quantum dots is analyzed for their interaction with LO-phonons. Both
the full two-time Green's function formalism and the one-time approximation
provided by the generalized Kadanoff-Baym ansatz are considered, in order to
compare their description of relaxation processes. It is shown that the
two-time quantum kinetics leads to thermalization in all the examined cases,
which is not the case for the one-time approach in the intermediate-coupling
regime, even though it provides convergence to a steady state. The
thermalization criterion used is the Kubo-Martin-Schwinger condition.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Signatures of spin in the n=1/3 Fractional Quantum Hall Effect
The activation gap Delta of the fractional quantum Hall state at constant
filling n =1/3 is measured in wide range of perpendicular magnetic field B.
Despite the full spin polarization of the incompressible ground state, we
observe a sharp crossover between a low-field linear dependence of Delta on B
associated to spin texture excitations and a Coulomb-like behavior at large B.
From the global gap-reduction we get information about the mobility edges in
the fractional quantum Hall regime.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Transient regime in non-linear transport through many-level quantum dots
We investigate the nonstationary electronic transport in noninteracting
nanostructures driven by a finite bias and time-dependent signals applied at
their contacts to the leads. The systems are modelled by a tight-binding
Hamiltonian and the transient currents are computed from the non-equilibrium
Green-Keldysh formalism. The numerical implementation is not restricted to weak
coupling to the leads and does not imply the wide-band limit assumption for the
spectral width of the leads. As an application of the method we study in detail
the transient behavior and the charge dynamics in single and double quantum
dots connected to leads by a step-like potential, but the method allows as well
the consideration of non-periodic potentials or short pulses. We show that when
the higher energy levels of the isolated system are located within the bias
window of the leads the transient current approaches the steady state in a
non-oscillatory smooth fashion. At moderate coupling to the leads and fixed
bias the transient acquires a step-like structure, the length of the steps
increasing with the system size. The number of levels inside a finite bias
window can be tuned by a constant gate potential. We find also that the
transient behavior depends on the specific way of coupling the leads to the
mesoscopic system.Comment: RevTeX, 12 pages, 11 include .eps figure
Three-terminal thermoelectric transport through a molecule placed on an Aharonov-Bohm ring
The thermoelectric transport through a ring threaded by an Aharonov-Bohm
flux, with a molecular bridge on one of its arms, is analyzed. The transport
electrons also interact with the vibrational excitations of that molecule. This
nano-system is connected to three terminals: two are electronic reservoirs,
which supply the transport electrons, and the third is the phonon bath which
thermalizes the molecular vibrations. Expressions for the transport
coefficients, relating all charge and heat currents to the temperature and
chemical potential differences between the terminals, are derived to second
order in the electron-vibration coupling. At linear response, all these
coefficients obey the full Onsager-Casimir relations. When the phonon bath is
held at a temperature different from those of the electronic reservoirs, a heat
current exchanged between the molecular vibrations and the transport electrons
can be converted into electric and/or heat electronic currents. The related
transport coefficients, which exist only due to the electron-vibration
coupling, change sign under the interchange between the electronic terminals
and the sign change of the magnetic flux. It is also demonstrated that the
Aharonov-Bohm flux can enhance this type of conversion.Comment: Added clearer kists of the new result
Photon position measure
The positive operator valued measure (POVM) for a photon counting array
detector is derived and found to equal photon flux density integrated over
pixel area and measurement time. Since photon flux density equals number
density multiplied by the speed of light, this justifies theoretically the
observation that a photon counting array provides a coarse grained measurement
of photon position. The POVM obtained here can be written as a set of
projectors onto a basis of localized states, consistent with the description of
photon position in a recent quantum imaging proposal [M. Tsang, Phys. Rev.
Lett. \textbf{102}, 253601 (2009)]. The wave function that describes a photon
counting experiment is the projection of the photon state vector onto this
localized basis. Collapse is to the electromagnetic vacuum and not to a
localized state, thus violating the text book rules of quantum mechanics but
compatible with the theory of generalized observables and the nonlocalizability
of an incoming photon
Carrier dynamics and coherent acoustic phonons in nitride heterostructures
We model generation and propagation of coherent acoustic phonons in
piezoelectric InGaN/GaN multi-quantum wells embedded in a \textit{pin} diode
structure and compute the time resolved reflectivity signal in simulated
pump-probe experiments. Carriers are created in the InGaN wells by ultrafast
pumping below the GaN band gap and the dynamics of the photoexcited carriers is
treated in a Boltzmann equation framework. Coherent acoustic phonons are
generated in the quantum well via both deformation potential electron-phonon
and piezoelectric electron-phonon interaction with photogenerated carriers,
with the latter mechanism being the dominant one. Coherent longitudinal
acoustic phonons propagate into the structure at the sound speed modifying the
optical properties and giving rise to a giant oscillatory differential
reflectivity signal. We demonstrate that coherent optical control of the
differential reflectivity can be achieved using a delayed control pulse.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figure
Long range scattering effects on spin Hall current in -type bulk semiconductors
Employing a nonequilibrium Green's function approach, we examine the effects
of long-range hole-impurity scattering on spin-Hall current in -type bulk
semiconductors within the framework of the self-consistent Born approximation.
We find that, contrary to the null effect of short-range scattering on
spin-Hall current, long-range collisions do produce a nonvanishing contribution
to the spin-Hall current, which is independent of impurity density in the
diffusive regime and relates only to hole states near the Fermi surface. The
sign of this contribution is opposite to that of the previously predicted
disorder-independent spin-Hall current, leading to a sign change of the total
spin-Hall current as hole density varies. Furthermore, we also make clear that
the disorder-independent spin-Hall effect is a result of an interband
polarization directly induced by the dc electric field with contributions from
all hole states in the Fermi sea.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figur
Numerical time propagation of quantum systems in radiation fields
Atoms, molecules or excitonic quasiparticles, for which excitations are
induced by external radiation fields and energy is dissipated through radiative
decay, are examples of driven open quantum systems. We explain the use of
commutator-free exponential time-propagators for the numerical solution of the
associated Schr\"odinger or master equations with a time-dependent Hamilton
operator. These time-propagators are based on the Magnus series but avoid the
computation of commutators, which makes them suitable for the efficient
propagation of systems with a large number of degrees of freedom. We present an
optimized fourth order propagator and demonstrate its efficiency in comparison
to the direct Runge-Kutta computation. As an illustrative example we consider
the parametrically driven dissipative Dicke model, for which we calculate the
periodic steady state and the optical emission spectrum.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figure
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