arXiv subjects

Nicolas Chauvin

Publications and source records attributed to Nicolas Chauvin.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Photo-induced Wavelength-tuning of Telecom-band Quantum Dot Nanowires Embedded in a Phase Change Material

Scalable quantum-photonic technologies require spatially separated emitters to emit at the same wavelength, yet epitaxially grown quantum dots naturally exhibit emitter-to-emitter variations in their emission energies. Here, we demonstrate a contact-free post-growth tuning approach for InAs quantum dots embedded in InP nanowires using the photo-induced transformation of an amorphous Sb2S3 shell. This photoinduced effect leads to a progressive relaxation of the strain imposed on the InP core, enabling controlled spectral tuning of the quantum-dot emission. The effect is observed both at room temperature and under cryogenic conditions for quantum dots emitting in the O-band of the telecommunications spectrum. Strain-induced redshifts of approximately 7 meV at room temperature and 28 meV under cryogenic conditions are observed, respectively. The use of an amorphous chalcogenide shell therefore provides a route to achieve local wavelength tuning at the single quantum-dot-in-a-nanowire level after growth. This approach could enable spectrally matched emitters for scalable quantum-photonic architectures.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2026

WinDOM: Self-Family Distillation for Small-Model GUI Grounding

Small ($\sim$2B) GUI-grounding agents are attractive for on-device deployment, accessibility tooling, and low-cost iteration, but at this scale they face two open recipe questions: how to obtain bounding-box training data without expensive human annotation, and how to combine supervised fine-tuning with reinforcement learning. We address both, with the explicit goal of pushing small-model performance rather than scaling up. WinDOM is a $54{,}425$-record grounding corpus harvested by driving an open-source Windows 11 web reimplementation under headless Playwright, with bounding boxes read directly off the DOM and no OCR or human annotation. Self-Family Distillation (SFD) is a single rejection-sampling cold-start parameterised only by the teacher choice: either an EMA of the student (no external model) or a frozen larger same-family teacher. We then treat the saturation depth of the SFD cold-start as an explicit GRPO hyperparameter. On a Qwen3.5-2B student, the under-saturated cold-start is a better GRPO initialiser than the converged one: SFD-4B with Early-init RL gains $+5.4$ OOD-mean ($+3.5$ ScreenSpot-Pro, $+7.0$ OSWorld-G, $+5.8$ ScreenSpot-V2) over the base. The same-size EMA mode lands within roughly one OOD-mean point of the cross-size $4$B variant ($65.2$ vs $66.3$) without an external teacher.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2025

Tunable polarization-entangled near-infrared photons from orthogonal GaAs nanowires

Quantum entanglement is a fundamental resource for emerging quantum technologies, enabling secure communication and enhanced sensing. For decades, generating polarization entangled states has been mainly achieved using bulk crystals with spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC), preventing scalability and on-chip integration. Miniaturizing the quantum source provides access to more versatility and tunability while enabling an easier integration to other devices, notably necessary for satellite-based quantum communication, and eventually reducing fabrication costs. This challenging task can be achieved with Zinc Blende GaAs nanowires. They already have shown an efficient photon pairs generation via SPDC at 1550 nm. Here we demonstrate that a pair of orthogonal GaAs nanowires constitutes a new nanoscale platform to control the quantum state at telecommunication wavelength, enabling a transition from polarization entangled to separable states as a function of the pump polarization, with fidelities reaching 90%

physics.optics↗

arXiv2023

Femtosecond laser induced creation of G and W-centers in silicon-on-insulator substrates

The creation of fluorescent defects in silicon is a key stepping stone towards assuring the integration perspectives of quantum photonic devices into existing technologies. Here we demonstrate the creation, by femtosecond laser annealing, of W and G-centers in commercial silicon on insulator (SOI) previously implanted with 12C+ ions. Their quality is comparable to that found for the same emitters obtained with conventional implant processes; as quantified by the photoluminescence radiative lifetime, the broadening of their zero-phonon line (ZPL) and the evolution of these quantities with temperature. In addition to this, we show that both defects can be created without carbon implantation and that we can erase the G-centers by annealing while enhancing the W-centers' emission. These demonstrations are relevant to the deterministic and operando generation of quantum emitters in silicon.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2021

Highly linear polarized emission at telecom bands in InAs/InP quantum dot-nanowires by geometry tailoring

Nanowire (NW)-based opto-electronic devices require certain engineering in the NW geometry to realize polarized-dependent light sources and photodetectors. We present a growth procedure to produce InAs/InP quantum dot-nanowires (QD-NWs) with an elongated top-view cross-section relying on the vapor-liquid-solid method using molecular beam epitaxy. By interrupting the rotation of the sample during the radial growth sequence of the InP shell, hexagonal asymmetric (HA) NWs with long/short cross-section axes were obtained instead of the usual symmetrical shape. Polarization-resolved photoluminescence measurements have revealed a significant influence of the asymmetric shaped NWs on the InAs QD emission polarization with the photons being mainly polarized parallel to the NW long cross-section axis. A degree of linear polarization (DLP) up to 91% is obtained, being at the state of the art for the reported DLP values from QD-NWs. More importantly, the growth protocol herein is fully compatible with the current applications of HA NWs covering a wide range of devices such as polarized light emitting diodes and photodetectors.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2020

Density-controlled growth of vertical InP nanowires on Si(111) substrates

A procedure to achieve the density-controlled growth of gold-catalyzed InP nanowires (NWs) on (111) silicon substrates using the vapor-liquid-solid method by molecular beam epitaxy is reported. We develop an effective and mask-free method based on controlling the number and the size of the Au-In catalyst droplets in addition to the conditions for the NW nucleation. We show that the NW density can be tuned with values in the range of 18 μm-2 to < 0.1 μm-2 by the suitable choice of the In/Au catalyst beam equivalent pressure (BEP) ratio, by the phosphorous BEP and the growth temperature. The same degree of control is transferred to InAs/InP quantum dot-nanowires, taking advantage of the ultra-low density to study by micro-photoluminescence the optical properties of a single quantum dot-nanowires emitting in the telecom band monolithically grown on silicon. Optical spectroscopy at cryogenic temperature successfully confirmed the relevance of our method to excite single InAs quantum dots on the as-grown sample, which opens the path for large-scale applications based on single quantum dot-nanowire devices integrated on silicon.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2019

InAs quantum dot in a needlelike tapered InP nanowire: a telecom band single photon source monolithically grown on silicon

Realizing single photon sources emitting in the telecom band on silicon substrates is essential to reach complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatible devices that secure communications over long distances. In this work, we propose the monolithic growth of needlelike tapered InAs/InP quantum dot-nanowires (QD-NWs) on silicon substrates with a small taper angle and a nanowire diameter tailored to support a single mode waveguide. Such a NW geometry is obtained by a controlled balance over axial and radial growths during the gold-catalyzed growth of the NWs by molecular beam epitaxy. This allows us to investigate the impact of the taper angle on the emission properties of a single InAs/InP QD-NW. At room temperature, a Gaussian far-field emission profile in the telecom O-band with a 30° beam divergence angle is demonstrated from a single InAs QD embedded in a 2° tapered InP NW. Moreover, single photon emission is observed at cryogenic temperature for an off-resonant excitation and the best result, $g^2(0) = 0.05$, is obtained for a 7° tapered NW. This all-encompassing study paves the way for the monolithic growth on silicon of an efficient single photon source in the telecom band based on InAs/InP QD-NWs.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2019

Optical and electronic properties in ferroelectric barium titanate-based compounds

The bandgap energy values for the ferroelectric BaTiO3-based solid solutions with isovalent substitution Ba1-x SrxTiO3, BaZrxTi1-xO3 and BaSnxTi1-xO3 were determined using diffuse reflectance spectra. While the corresponding unit cell volume follows Vegard's law in accordance with the different ionic radii of the ionic substitutions, the bandgap values depict non-linear compositional dependences for all the solid solutions. The effect is considerably large for BaZrxTi1-xO3 and BaSnxTi1-xO3 solutions, depicting a bandgap linear compositional dependence up to x=0.6, for x>0.6 BaZrxTi1-xO3 compounds present much larger bandgap values than BaSnxTi1-xO3 counterparts. Electronic properties have been investigated through X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy in BaSnxTi1-xO3 compounds, indicating that the Sn 3d and Ti 2p core levels shift against the Ba 3d ones within the whole compositional range with the same energy trend as that observed for the optical bandgap. Since for Ba1-x SrxTiO3 compounds no major bandgap variation is observed, we conclude that the bandgap compositional dependences observed for BaSnxTi1-xO3 compounds and BaZrxTi1-xO3 ones are originated from the structural sensitivity of the O, Ti and Sn or Zr electronic bands involved in the bandgap transition of these compounds. With this work, we underline the reliability of the bandgap determined from diffuse reflectance spectrometry experiments, as a means to non-invasively evaluate the electronic properties of powder materials.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2017

Performances of Neutron Scattering Spectrometers on a Compact Neutron Source

There is currently a big effort put into the operation and construction of world class neutron scattering facilities (SNS and SNS-TS2 in the US, J-PARC in Japan, ESS in Europe, CSS in China, PIK in Russia). On the other hand, there exists a network of smaller neutron scattering facilities which play a key role in creating a large neutron scattering community who is able to efficiently use the existing facilities. With the foreseen closure of the ageing nuclear research reactors, especially in Europe there is a risk of seeing a shrinking of the community who would then be able to use efficiently the world class facilities. There is thus a reflection being conducted in several countries for the replacement of smaller research reactors with low energy accelerator based sources. We consider here a reference design for a compact neutron source based on existing accelerator components. We estimate the performances of various types of neutron scattering instruments built around such a source. The results suggest that nowadays state of the art neutron scattering experiments could be successfully performed on such a compact source and that it is thus a viable replacement solution for neutron research reactors.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2017

Neutrons production on the IPHI accelerator for the validation of the design of the compact neutron source SONATE

We aim at building an accelerator based compact neutron source which would provide a thermal neutron flux on the order of 4E12 n.s-1.cm-2.sr-1. Such brilliance would put compact neutron sources on par with existing medium flux neutron research reactors. We performed the first neutron production tests on the IPHI proton accelerator at Saclay. The neutron fluxes were measured using gold foil activation and 3He detectors. The measured fluxes were compared with MCNP and GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulations in which the whole experimental setup was modelled. There is a good agreement between the experimental measurements and the Monte-Carlo simulations. The available modelling tools will allow us to optimize the whole Target Moderator Reflector assembly together with the neutron scattering spectrometer geometries.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2012

Enhanced spontaneous emission from quantum dots in short photonic crystal waveguides

We report a study of the quantum dot emission in short photonic crystal waveguides. We observe that the quantum dot photoluminescence intensity and decay rate are strongly enhanced when the emission energy is in resonance with Fabry-Perot cavity modes in the slow-light regime of the dispersion curve. The experimental results are in agreement with previous theoretical predictions and further supported by three-dimensional finite element simulation. Our results show that the combination of slow group velocity and Fabry-Perot cavity resonance provides an avenue to efficiently channel photons from quantum dots into waveguides for integrated quantum photonic applications.

physics.optics↗