arXiv subjects

Sadhvikas Addamane

Publications and source records attributed to Sadhvikas Addamane.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Automated Vector-Scanning Spectroscopy for Large-Scale Characterization of Single Quantum Emitters

The inherent spatial randomness and broad spectral heterogeneity of epitaxial quantum dots (QDs) -- one of the most mature classes of solid-state quantum emitters -- remains a major obstacle to their scalable deployment in integrated photonic quantum technologies. Overcoming this challenge requires deterministic fabrication strategies capable of precisely aligning nanophotonic structures with high-quality emitters, which in turn demands efficient and automated single-QD characterization. Despite substantial progress in optical measurement techniques, a platform capable of autonomous, data-efficient, and sufficiently versatile characterization of single quantum dots at the chip scale remains lacking. Here, we introduce an automated cryogenic measurement platform that combines wide-field photoluminescence imaging with vector-stage-scanning confocal spectroscopy to enable high-throughput, chip-scale targeted optical characterization of individual QDs. Using this platform, we automatically acquire photoluminescence data from thousands of GaAs/AlGaAs QDs on a single chip. We demonstrate how this extensive dataset enables identification of high-performance emitters for future deterministic device fabrication, while simultaneously revealing statistical trends across the QD ensemble. By uniting data-efficient targeted measurements with scalable automation, our platform establishes a foundation for large-scale quantum photonic integration and the high throughput characterization framework needed to accelerate materials optimization.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2026

Efficient generation of entangled photons in the telecommunications range using nonlinear metasurfaces integrated with ScAlN/GaN heterostructures

Entangled photons provide non-classical correlations that enable measurement sensitivities beyond classical limits, scalable fault-tolerant quantum computation, and fundamentally secure quantum communication, making them a foundational necessity for next-generation quantum technologies. Here we propose and analyze a novel source of entangled photons based on ScAlN/GaN quantum wells integrated with dielectric metasurfaces. Giant second-order intersubband nonlinearity of the GaN quantum wells with strain-compensated delta-doped ScAlN barriers caused by strong built-in electric fields combined with superior mode-coupling performance of metasurfaces optimized by inverse design give rise to efficient parametric down-conversion and generation of entangled photons in the telecom range. We develop a rigorous Heisenberg-Langevin formalism which includes field quantization, dissipation and fluctuations for all fields, parametric amplification of thermal noise and zero-point fluctuations, and other relevant effects. Our proposed approach of employing the emergent photonic material ScAlN promises high biphoton generation rate over $10^{10}$ s$^{-1}$ from a compact integrated structure that is only 0.5 $\mu$m thick while mitigating strain-related issues that have so far impeded progress of nitride-based heterostructures for quantum photonic applications into the infrared and visible wavelengths. Our result therefore is relevant for numerous applications ranging from quantum sensing, quantum information, and computing.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2026

Island Sliding Barriers: A first-principles metric for determining remote epitaxy viability

Remote epitaxy, where a 2D van der Waals material (usually graphene) is inserted on top of the substrate before film epitaxy, has emerged as a promising path for growing electronics with lower defect rates and less stringent lattice matching requirements. The exact mechanism behind remote epitaxy has not been definitively shown, however, and it is not obvious when examining a new substrate-film pair whether they would be compatible with the remote epitaxy process. In this paper, we use first principles calculations to test several different mechanisms for determining whether a given substrate-film pair will successfully be grown with remote epitaxy. We find that previously calculated metrics such as electrostatic potential do not hold sufficient explanatory power. We find that the sliding barrier of small islands on the surface when the atomic positions are allowed to optimize provides the most rigorous criteria for whether a given substrate-film pair is remote epitaxy active. This indicates that remote epitaxy is likely a phenomenon related to the kinetics and ease of island migration on the graphene surface.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2026

Simultaneous anti-bunched and super-bunched photons from a GaAs Quantum dot in a dielectric metasurface

Semiconductor quantum dots host a rich manifold of excitonic complexes, including neutral excitons that emit anti-bunched single photons and charged exciton complexes capable of producing super-bunched photons via cascade emission. Accessing both emission regimes from a single emitter would open routes to novel quantum protocols, including advanced quantum imaging. In practice, however, emission from charged exciton complexes is intrinsically weak, often orders of magnitude dimmer than neutral excitons, placing simultaneous dual-mode operation out of reach. Here, we overcome this limitation by embedding the quantum dot in a dielectric Mie-resonant metasurface that provides order-of-magnitude photoluminescence enhancement across both neutral and charged exciton transitions of a single GaAs quantum dot. Under identical non-resonant pumping conditions, the emission from the neutral exciton yields anti-bunched emission ($g^{(2)}(0) < 0.5$) and the emission from positively charged exciton complexes shows super-bunched emission ($g^{(2)}(0) > 3.5$) with comparable count rates (~12 kHz). Crucially, super-bunching emerges only when charged exciton emission spectrally overlaps with the Mie resonances and vanishes in un-patterned slabs, demonstrating that photonic engineering, is essential for accessing these weak quantum light states. These results demonstrate a scalable, position-tolerant platform for harnessing the full excitonic structure of solid-state emitters.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Atomic layer etching of InGaAs using sequential exposures of atomic hydrogen and oxygen gas

The high frequency performance and yield of III-V semiconductor devices such as InP HEMTs is negatively impacted by subsurface etch damage and non-uniform etch depth over the wafer. Atomic layer etching (ALE) has the potential to overcome this challenge because of its ability to etch with Angstrom-scale precision, low damage, and intrinsic wafer-scale uniformity. Here, we report an ALE process for InGaAs based on sequential atomic hydrogen and oxygen gas exposures. An etch rate of 0.095 \r{A}/cycle was observed at 350 {\deg}C using ex-situ spectroscopic ellipsometry. The sample remains atomically smooth after 200 cycles of ALE. This process could be employed as a gate recess etch step in InP HEMT fabrication to improve microwave performance and yield.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Liquid combs: broadband light with equidistance and without stability

Broadband light sources with well-defined spectral structures are vital for science and technology. However, the evenly spaced lines of frequency combs represent only a small subset of all possible structured white-light sources. We demonstrate liquid combs: optical states that preserve spectral equidistance but lack temporal stability. By engineering the gain and dispersion of semiconductor laser cavities, we produce light that possesses rapid phase fluctuations but maintains relative phase differences between modes that vary identically. We show experimentally that this phenomenon occurs in multiple laser platforms -- across multiple octaves -- through the creation of a metrological technique that determines the phase differences. We also show theoretically that this is a general phenomenon that can be described using a mean-field theory. These liquid combs are attractive for many applications due to having wider bandwidths than frequency combs, and more generally, they represent the long-sought realization of structured white-light sources that are not combs.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2024

AutoSciLab: A Self-Driving Laboratory For Interpretable Scientific Discovery

Advances in robotic control and sensing have propelled the rise of automated scientific laboratories capable of high-throughput experiments. However, automated scientific laboratories are currently limited by human intuition in their ability to efficiently design and interpret experiments in high-dimensional spaces, throttling scientific discovery. We present AutoSciLab, a machine learning framework for driving autonomous scientific experiments, forming a surrogate researcher purposed for scientific discovery in high-dimensional spaces. AutoSciLab autonomously follows the scientific method in four steps: (i) generating high-dimensional experiments (x \in R^D) using a variational autoencoder (ii) selecting optimal experiments by forming hypotheses using active learning (iii) distilling the experimental results to discover relevant low-dimensional latent variables (z \in R^d, with d << D) with a 'directional autoencoder' and (iv) learning a human interpretable equation connecting the discovered latent variables with a quantity of interest (y = f(z)), using a neural network equation learner. We validate the generalizability of AutoSciLab by rediscovering a) the principles of projectile motion and b) the phase transitions within the spin-states of the Ising model (NP-hard problem). Applying our framework to an open-ended nanophotonics challenge, AutoSciLab uncovers a fundamentally novel method for directing incoherent light emission that surpasses the current state-of-the-art (Iyer et al. 2023b, 2020).

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

Self-driving lab discovers principles for steering spontaneous emission

We developed an autonomous experimentation platform to accelerate interpretable scientific discovery in ultrafast nanophotonics, targeting a novel method to steer spontaneous emission from reconfigurable semiconductor metasurfaces. Controlling spontaneous emission is crucial for clean-energy solutions in illumination, thermal radiation engineering, and remote sensing. Despite the potential of reconfigurable semiconductor metasurfaces with embedded sources for spatiotemporal control, achieving arbitrary far-field control remains challenging. Here, we present a self-driving lab (SDL) platform that addresses this challenge by discovering the governing equations for predicting the far-field emission profile from light-emitting metasurfaces. We discover that both the spatial gradient (grating-like) and the curvature (lens-like) of the local refractive index are key factors in steering spontaneous emission. The SDL employs a machine-learning framework comprising: (1) a variational autoencoder for generating complex spatial refractive index profiles, (2) an active learning agent for guiding experiments with real-time closed-loop feedback, and (3) a neural network-based equation learner to uncover structure-property relationships. The SDL demonstrated a four-fold enhancement in peak emission directivity (up to 77%) over a 72{\deg} field of view within ~300 experiments. Our findings reveal that combinations of positive gratings and lenses are as effective as negative lenses and gratings for all emission angles, offering a novel strategy for controlling spontaneous emission beyond conventional Fourier optics.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2024

Efficient, indistinguishable telecom C-band photons using a tapered nanobeam

Telecom C-band single photons exhibit the lowest attenuation in optical fibers, enabling long-haul quantum-secured communication. However, efficient coupling with optical fibers is crucial for these single photons to be effective carriers in long-distance transmission. In this work, we demonstrate an efficient fiber-coupled single photon source at the telecom C-band using InAs/InP quantum dots coupled to a tapered nanobeam. The tapered nanobeam structure facilitates directional emission that is mode-matched to a lensed fiber, resulting in a collection efficiency of up to 65% from the nanobeam to a single-mode fiber. Using this approach, we demonstrate single photon count rates of 575 $\pm$ 5 Kcps and a single photon purity of $g^2$ (0) = 0.015 $\pm$ 0.003. Additionally, we demonstrate Hong-Ou Mandel interference from the emitted photons with a visibility of 0.84 $\pm$ 0.06. From these measurements, we determine a photon coherence time of 450 $\pm$ 20 ps, a factor of just 8.3 away from the lifetime limit. This work represents an important step towards the development of telecom C-band single-photon sources emitting bright, pure, and indistinguishable photons, which are necessary to realize fiber-based long-distance quantum networks

quant-ph↗

arXiv2023

Fundamental scaling limits and bandwidth shaping of frequency-modulated combs

Frequency-modulated (FM) combs based on active cavities like quantum cascade lasers have recently emerged as promising light sources in many spectral regions. Unlike passive modelocking, which uses amplitude modulation to generate amplitude modulation, FM combs use phase modulation to generate phase modulation. They can therefore be regarded as a phase-domain version of passive modelocking. However, while the ultimate scaling laws of passive modelocking have long been known -- Haus showed in 1975 that pulses have a bandwidth proportional to effective gain bandwidth -- the limits of FM combs have been much less clear. Here, we show that FM combs are governed by the same fundamental limits, producing combs whose bandwidths are linear in the effective gain bandwidth. Not only do we show theoretically that the diffusive effect of gain curvature limits comb bandwidth, we also show experimentally how this limit can be increased. By adding carefully designed resonant-loss structures that are evanescently coupled to the cavity of a terahertz laser, we reduce the curvature and increase the effective gain bandwidth of the laser, demonstrating bandwidth enhancement. Our results give a new degree of freedom for the creation of active chip-scale combs and can be applied to a wide array of cavity geometries.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2022

Sub picosecond steering of ultrafast incoherent emission from semiconductor metasurfaces

The ability to dynamically steer fs pulses from a monolithically integrated source is a critical milestone for the fields of nanophotonics and ultrafast optics. The nascent field of reconfigurable metasurfaces -- made of optically resonant meta-atoms -- has shown great promise in manipulating light-matter interactions through subwavelength control of the phase, amplitude, and polarization of light. These active metasurfaces arbitrarily transform an incident wavefront using a reconfigurable spatial phase profile and thus have been limited to manipulating coherent external sources. Light emitting metasurfaces obtained through integration of incoherent emitters with meta-atoms, have been used to statically increase the quantum efficiency of the emission through Purcell factor enhancement and control the far-field emission properties of the light to collimate and focus spontaneous emission. Active manipulation of such incoherent light sources, however, remains a challenge as current phase-sensitive approaches used for coherent sources cannot be directly applied. Spatiotemporal control at ultrafast timescales of incoherent light emission could lead to a transformative technological leap allowing low-power light emitting diodes (LEDs) to replace high-power coherent laser sources, enabling holographic LED displays and other key optical transceiver applications including remote-sensing, perception, and high-speed optical communication systems. In this work, we theoretically predict and experimentally demonstrate for the first time, sub-picosecond steering over a 70{\deg} range of ultrafast incoherent emission from a light emitting metasurface.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2022

Resonant Semiconductor Metasurfaces for Generating Complex Quantum States

Quantum state engineering, the cornerstone of quantum photonic technologies, mainly relies on spontaneous parametric down-conversion and four-wave mixing, where one or two pump photons decay into a photon pair. Both these nonlinear effects require momentum conservation (i.e., phase-matching) for the participating photons, which strongly limits the versatility of the resulting quantum states. Nonlinear metasurfaces, due to their subwavelength thickness, relax this constraint and extend the boundaries of quantum state engineering. Here, we generate entangled photons via spontaneous parametric down-conversion in semiconductor metasurfaces with high-quality resonances. By enhancing the quantum vacuum field, our metasurfaces boost the emission of photon pairs within narrow resonance bands at multiple selected wavelengths. Due to the relaxed momentum conservation, the same resonances support photon pair generation from pump photons of practically any energy. This enables the generation of complex frequency-multiplexed quantum states, in particular cluster states. Our results demonstrate the multifunctional use of metasurfaces for quantum state engineering.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Controllable finite ultra-narrow quality-factor peak in a perturbed Dirac-cone band structure of a photonic crystal slab

We show that by using a perturbed photonic Dirac-cone, one can realize ultra-narrow and finite Q-factor peak in the wavevector space, with both the peak value and the width separately tunable. We also discuss a lower bound in the minimal viable width given a peak Q-value while maintaining sufficient Q differentiation among modes. The strong angular and frequency Q-selection finds applications in optical devices where strong angle- and frequency-selection is needed.

physics.optics↗