arXiv subjects

Christoph Rupprecht

Publications and source records attributed to Christoph Rupprecht.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2022

Brightening of a dark monolayer semiconductor via strong light-matter coupling in a cavity

Engineering the properties of quantum materials via strong light-matter coupling is a compelling research direction with a multiplicity of modern applications. Those range from modifying charge transport in organic molecules, steering particle correlation and interactions, and even controlling chemical reactions. Here, we study the modification of the material properties via strong coupling and demonstrate an effective inversion of the excitonic band-ordering in a monolayer of WSe2 with spin-forbidden, optically dark ground state. In our experiments, we harness the strong light-matter coupling between cavity photon and the high energy, spin-allowed bright exciton, and thus creating two bright polaritonic modes in the optical bandgap with the lower polariton mode pushed below the WSe2 dark state. We demonstrate that in this regime the commonly observed luminescence quenching stemming from the fast relaxation to the dark ground state is prevented, which results in the brightening of this intrinsically dark material. We probe this effective brightening by temperature-dependent photoluminescence, and we find an excellent agreement with a theoretical model accounting for the inversion of the band ordering and phonon-assisted polariton relaxation.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2021

Spatial coherence of room-temperature monolayer WSe$_2$ exciton-polaritons in a trap

The emergence of spatial and temporal coherence of light emitted from solid-state systems is a fundamental phenomenon, rooting in a plethora of microscopic processes. It is intrinsically aligned with the control of light-matter coupling, and canonical for laser oscillation. However, it also emerges in the superradiance of multiple, phase-locked emitters, and more recently, coherence and long-range order have been investigated in bosonic condensates of thermalized light, as well as in exciton-polaritons driven to a ground state via stimulated scattering. Here, we experimentally show that the interaction between photons in a Fabry-Perot microcavity and excitons in an atomically thin WSe$_2$ layer is sufficient such that the system enters the hybridized regime of strong light-matter coupling at ambient conditions. Via Michelson interferometry, we capture clear evidence of increased spatial and temporal coherence of the emitted light from the spatially confined system ground-state. The coherence build-up is accompanied by a threshold-like behaviour of the emitted light intensity, which is a fingerprint of a polariton laser effect. Valley-physics is manifested in the presence of an external magnetic field, which allows us to manipulate K and K' polaritons via the Valley-Zeeman-effect. Our findings are of high application relevance, as they confirm the possibility to use atomically thin crystals as simple and versatile components of coherent light-sources, and in valleytronic applications at room temperature.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

Micro- Mechanical assembly of high-quality Fabry-Perot microcavities for the integration with two-dimensional materials

Integrating monolayers of two-dimensional semiconductors in planar, and potentially microstructured microcavities is challenging because of the few, available approaches to overgrow the monolayers without damaging them. Some strategies have been developed, but they either rely on complicated experimental settings, expensive technologies or compromise the available quality factors. As a result, high quality Fabry-Perot microcavities are not widely available to the community focusing on light-matter coupling with atomically thin materials. Here, we provide details on a recently developed technique to micro-mechanically assemble Fabry-Perot Microcavities. Our approach does not rely on difficult or expensive technologies, and yields device characteristics marking the state of the art in cavities with integrated atomically thin semiconductors.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2018

Dynamics of liquid crystal on hexagonal lattice

Nematic liquid crystal (LC) molecules adsorbed on two dimensional materials are aligned along the crystal directions of the hexagonal lattice. It was demonstrated that short electric pulses can reorient the aligned LC molecules in the preferred armchair direction of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). Several states with a variety of colors were obtained by changing the direction and strength of the electric pulses. The ab initio calculations based on density functional theory was carried out to determine the favorable adsorption configurations of the LC molecules on the h-BN surface. A non-volatile display, in which pixel resolution can be determined by grains of hexagonal surface, is proposed, which can offer a pathway towards dynamic high-quality pixels with low power consumption, and could define a new paradigm for all non-volatile display applications.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2016

Sharp interface limit for a phase field model in structural optimization

We formulate a general shape and topology optimization problem in structural optimization by using a phase field approach. This problem is considered in view of well-posedness and we derive optimality conditions. We relate the diffuse interface problem to a perimeter penalized sharp interface shape optimization problem in the sense of $Γ$-convergence of the reduced objective functional. Additionally, convergence of the equations of the first variation can be shown. The limit equations can also be derived directly from the problem in the sharp interface setting. Numerical computations demonstrate that the approach can be applied for complex structural optimization problems.

math.OC↗

arXiv2015

An extension of the projected gradient method to a Banach space setting with application in structural topology optimization

For the minimization of a nonlinear cost functional $j$ under convex constraints the relaxed projected gradient process $φ_{k+1} = φ_{k} + α_k(P_H(φ_{k}-λ_k \nabla_H j(φ_{k}))-φ_{k})$ is a well known method. The analysis is classically performed in a Hilbert space $H$. We generalize this method to functionals $j$ which are differentiable in a Banach space. Thus it is possible to perform e.g. an $L^2$ gradient method if $j$ is only differentiable in $L^\infty$. We show global convergence using Armijo backtracking in $α_k$ and allow the inner product and the scaling $λ_k$ to change in every iteration. As application we present a structural topology optimization problem based on a phase field model, where the reduced cost functional $j$ is differentiable in $H^1\cap L^\infty$. The presented numerical results using the $H^1$ inner product and a pointwise chosen metric including second order information show the expected mesh independency in the iteration numbers. The latter yields an additional, drastic decrease in iteration numbers as well as in computation time. Moreover we present numerical results using a BFGS update of the $H^1$ inner product for further optimization problems based on phase field models.

math.OC↗

arXiv2013

Optimal control of Allen-Cahn systems

Optimization problems governed by Allen-Cahn systems including elastic effects are formulated and first-order necessary optimality conditions are presented. Smooth as well as obstacle potentials are considered, where the latter leads to an MPEC. Numerically, for smooth potential the problem is solved efficiently by the Trust-Region-Newton-Steihaug-cg method. In case of an obstacle potential first numerical results are presented.

math.OC↗

arXiv2013

Multi-material phase field approach to structural topology optimization

Multi-material structural topology and shape optimization problems are formulated within a phase field approach. First-order conditions are stated and the relation of the necessary conditions to classical shape derivatives are discussed. An efficient numerical method based on an $H^1$-gradient projection method is introduced and finally several numerical results demonstrate the applicability of the approach.

math.OC↗