Real-time tracking of coherent oscillations of electrons in a nanodevice by photo-assisted tunnelling

Coherent collective oscillations of electrons excited in metallic nanostructures (localized surface plasmons) can confine incident light to atomic scales and enable strong light-matter interactions, which depend nonlinearly on the local field. Direct sampling of such collective electron oscillations...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2024-02, Vol.15 (1), p.1316-1316, Article 1316
Main Authors: Luo, Yang, Neubrech, Frank, Martin-Jimenez, Alberto, Liu, Na, Kern, Klaus, Garg, Manish
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
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142/126
147/135
639/766/1130/2799
639/766/400/584
Coherence
Electric fields
Electron oscillations
Electrons
Humanities and Social Sciences
Incident light
Lasers
Light
Light modulation
multidisciplinary
Nanoantennas
Nanotechnology devices
Optics
Oscillations
Phase control
Plasmons
Real time
Recording
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Tracking
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Summary:Coherent collective oscillations of electrons excited in metallic nanostructures (localized surface plasmons) can confine incident light to atomic scales and enable strong light-matter interactions, which depend nonlinearly on the local field. Direct sampling of such collective electron oscillations in real-time is crucial to performing petahertz scale optical modulation, control, and readout in a quantum nanodevice. Here, we demonstrate real-time tracking of collective electron oscillations in an Au bowtie nanoantenna, by recording photo-assisted tunnelling currents generated by such oscillations in this quantum nanodevice. The collective electron oscillations show a noninstantaneous response to the driving laser fields with a T 2 decay time of nearly 8 femtoseconds. The contributions of linear and nonlinear electron oscillations in the generated tunnelling currents were precisely determined. A phase control of electron oscillations in the nanodevice is illustrated. Functioning in ambient conditions, the excitation, phase control, and read-out of coherent electron oscillations pave the way toward on-chip light-wave electronics in quantum nanodevices. The authors demonstrate that the collective electron oscillations driven by light in a quantum nanodevice can be measured directly in the time domain, by recording the photo-assisted tunnelling currents using the technique of homodyne beating.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-024-45564-w