arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Oliver G. Schmidt.
The interplay of topological defects with curvature is studied for out-of-surface magnetic vortices in thin spherical nanoshells. In the case of easy-surface Heisenberg magnet it is shown that the curvature of the underlying surface leads to a coupling between the localized out-of-surface component of the vortex with its delocalized in-surface structure, i.e. polarity-chirality coupling.
The experimental progress in synthesizing low-dimensional nanostructures where carriers are confined to bent surfaces has boosted the interest in the theory of quantum mechanics on curved two-dimensional manifolds. It was recently asserted that constrained electrically charged particles couple to a term linear in A_3 M, where A_3 is the transversal component of the electromagnetic vector potential and M the surface mean curvature, thereby making a dimensional reduction procedure impracticable in the presence of fields. Here we resolve this apparent paradox by providing a consistent general framework of the thin-wall quantization procedure. We also show that the separability of the equation of motions is not endangered by the particular choice of the constraint imposed on the transversal fluctuations of the wavefunction, which renders the thin-wall quantization procedure well-founded. It can be applied without restrictions.
We study the electronic and optical properties of laterally coupled InGaAs/GaAs quantum dot molecules under lateral electric field. We find that electrons perceive the double-dot structure as a compound single object, while the holes discern two well separated dots. Through a combination of predictive atomistic modeling, detailed morphology studies, and single object micro-photoluminescence measurements, we show that this peculiar confinement results in an unusual heterogeneous behavior of electrons and holes with profound consequences on optical properties.
We demonstrate how the controlled positioning of a plasmonic nanoparticle modifies the photoluminescence of a single epitaxial GaAs quantum dot. The antenna particle leads to an increase of the luminescence intensity by about a factor of eight. Spectrally and temporally resolved photoluminescence measurements prove an increase of the quantum dot's excitation rate. The combination of stable epitaxial quantum emitters and plasmonic nanostructures promises to be highly beneficial for nanoscience and quantum optics.
A radial InGaAs/GaAs/1-hexadecanethiol superlattice is fabricated by the roll-up of a strained InGaAs/GaAs bilayer passivated with a molecular self-assembled monolayer. Our technique allows the formation of multi-period inorganic/organic hybrid heterostructures. This paper contains the detailed experimental description of how to fabricate these structures.
we demonstrate a technology "Release and bond-back of layers (REBOLA)" that exploits the deterministic wrinkling of a semiconductor layer to create well-defined and versatile nanochannel networks. In linear networks, the periodicity of branch channels as a function of etch-width was analyzed and compared with theoretical calculations. A self-similar folding phenomenon of wrinkles near a fixed boundary was revealed by autocorrelation analysis. The formation of branch channels within circular networks was studied on different length scales and was controlled by the size of the etched circular network and the shape of the initial pattern. To elucidate the usefulness of REBOLA, we exemplified nanofluidic transport as well as femto-litre filling and emptying of individual wrinkles on a standard semiconductor substrate, in which corner flow played an important role.
One of the biggest challenges of nanotechnology is the fabrication of nano-objects with perfectly controlled properties. Here we employ a focused laser beam both to characterize and to {\it in-situ} modify single semiconductor structures by heating them from cryogenic to high temperatures. The heat treatment allows us to blue-shift, in a broad range and with resolution-limited accuracy, the quantized energy levels of light and charge carriers confined in optical microcavities and self-assembled quantum dots (QDs). We demonstrate the approach by tuning an optical mode into resonance with the emission of a single QD and by bringing different QDs in mutual resonance. This processing method may open the way to a full control of nanostructures at the quantum level.