arXiv subjects

Amalya Johnson

Publications and source records attributed to Amalya Johnson.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

Achiral dielectric metasurfaces for spectral and polarization control of valley specific light emission from monolayer MoS2

Excitons in two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides have a valley degree of freedom that can be optically accessed and manipulated for quantum information processing. Here, we integrate MoS2 with achiral silicon disk array metasurfaces to enhance and control valley-specific absorption and emission. Through the coupling to the metasurface Mie modes, the intensity and lifetime of the emission of neutral excitons, trions and defect bound excitons can be enhanced, while the spectral shape can be modified. Additionally, we demonstrate the symmetric enhancement of the degree-of-polarization (DOP) of neutral exciton and trions via valley-resolved PL measurements, and find that the DOP can be as high as 24% for exciton emission and 34% for trion emission at 100K. These results can be understood by analyzing the near-field impact of metasurface resonators on both the chiral absorption of MoS2 emitters as well as the enhanced emission from the Purcell effect. Combining Si-compatible photonic design with large-scale (mm-scale) 2D materials integration, our work makes an important step towards on-chip valleytronic applications approaching room-temperature operation.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2023

Giant room-temperature nonlinearities from a monolayer Janus topological semiconductor

Nonlinear optical materials possess wide applications, ranging from terahertz and mid-infrared detection to energy harvesting. Recently, the correlations between nonlinear optical responses and topological properties, such as Berry curvature and the quantum metric tensor, have stimulated great interest. Here, we report giant room-temperature nonlinearities in an emergent non-centrosymmetric two-dimensional topological material, the Janus transition metal dichalcogenides in the 1T' phase, which are synthesized by an advanced atomic-layer substitution method. High harmonic generation, terahertz emission spectroscopy, and second harmonic generation measurements consistently reveal orders-of-the-magnitude enhancement in terahertz-frequency nonlinearities of 1T' MoSSe (e.g., > 50 times higher than 2H MoS$_2$ for 18th order harmonic generation; > 20 times higher than 2H MoS$_2$ for terahertz emission). It is elucidated that such colossal nonlinear optical responses come from topological band mixing and strong inversion symmetry breaking due to the Janus structure. Our work defines general protocols for designing materials with large nonlinearities and preludes the applications of topological materials in optoelectronics down to the monolayer limit. This two-dimensional form of topological materials also constitute a unique platform for examining origin of the anomalous high-harmonic generation, with potential applications as building blocks for scalable attosecond sources.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2021

Probing Electron-Hole Coherence in Strongly-Driven Solids

High-harmonic generation (HHG) is a coherent optical process in which the incident photon energy is up-converted to the multiples of its initial energy. In solids, under the influence of a strong laser field, electron-hole (e-h) pairs are generated and subsequently driven to high energy and momentum within a fraction of the optical cycle. These dynamics encode the band structure, including non-trivial topological properties of the source material, through both intraband current and interband polarization, into the high harmonic spectrum. In the course of this process, dephasing between the driven electron and the hole can significantly reduce the HHG efficiency. Here, we exploit this feature and turn it into a measurement of e-h coherence in strongly driven solids. Utilizing a pre-pump pulse, we first photodope monolayer molybdenum disulfide and then examine the HHG induced by an intense infrared pulse. We observe clear suppression of the HH intensity, which becomes more pronounced with increasing order. Based on quantum simulations, we attribute this monotonic order dependence as a signature of ultrafast electron-hole dephasing, which leads to an exponential decay of the inter-band polarization, proportional to the sub-cycle excursion time of the e-h pair. Our results demonstrate the importance of many-body effects, such as density-dependent decoherence in HHG and provide a novel platform to probe electron-hole coherence in strongly driven systems.

physics.optics↗