arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Xiaodong Cui.
We report experimental measurements of electronic Raman scattering under resonant conditions by electrons in individual single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). The inelastic Raman scattering at low frequency range reveals a single particle excitation feature and the dispersion of electronic structure around the center of Brillouin zone of a semiconducting SWNT (14, 13) is extracted.
Coherence is a crucial requirement to realize quantum manipulation through light-matter interactions. Here we report the observation of anomalously robust valley polarization and valley coherence in bilayer WS2. The polarization of the photoluminescence from bilayer WS2 inherits that of the excitation source with both circularly and linearly polarized and retains even at room temperature. The near unity circular polarization of the luminescence reveals the coupling of spin, layer and valley degree of freedom in bilayer system, while the linear polarized photoluminescence manifests quantum coherence between the two inequivalent band extrema in momentum space, namely, the valley quantum coherence in atomically thin bilayer WS2. This observation opens new perspectives for quantum manipulation in atomically thin semiconductors.
In monolayer group-VI transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDC), charge carriers have spin and valley degrees of freedom, both associated with magnetic moments. On the other hand, the layer degree of freedom in multilayers is associated with electrical polarization. Here, we show that TMDC bilayers offer an unprecedented platform to realize a strong coupling between the spin, layer pseudospin, and valley degrees of freedom of holes. Such coupling not only gives rise to the spin Hall effect and spin circular dichroism in inversion symmetric bilayer, but also leads to a variety of magnetoelectric effects permitting quantum manipulation of these electronic degrees of freedom. Oscillating electric and magnetic fields can both drive the hole spin resonance where the two fields have valley-dependent interference, making possible a prototype interplay between the spin and valley as information carriers for potential valley-spintronic applications. We show how to realize quantum gates on the spin qubit controlled by the valley bit.
Atomically thin MoS$_{2}$ crystals have been recognized as a quasi-2D semiconductor with remarkable physics properties. This letter reports our Raman scattering measurements on multilayer and monolayer MoS$_{2}$, especially in the low-frequency range ($<$50 cm$^{-1}$). We find two low-frequency Raman modes with contrasting thickness dependence. With increasing the number of MoS$_{2}$ layers, one shows a significant increase in frequency while the other decreases following a 1/N (N denotes layer-number) trend. With the aid of first-principle calculations we assign the former as the shear mode $E_{2g}^{2}$ and the latter as the compression vibrational mode. The opposite evolution of the two modes with thickness demonstrates novel vibrational modes in atomically thin crystal as well as a new and more precise way to characterize thickness of atomically thin MoS$_{2}$ films. In addition, we observe a broad feature around 38 cm$^{-1}$ (~5 meV) which is visible only under near-resonance excitation and pinned at the fixed energy independent of thickness. We interpret the feature as an electronic Raman scattering associated with the spin-orbit coupling induced splitting in conduction band at K points in their Brillouin zone.
Motivated by the triumph and limitation of graphene for electronic applications, atomically thin layers of group VI transition metal dichalcogenides are attracting extensive interest as a class of graphene-like semiconductors with a desired band-gap in the visible frequency range. The monolayers feature a valence band spin splitting with opposite sign in the two valleys located at corners of 1st Brillouin zone. This spin-valley coupling, particularly pronounced in tungsten dichalcogenides, can benefit potential spintronics and valleytronics with the important consequences of spin-valley interplay and the suppression of spin and valley relaxations. Here we report the first optical studies of WS2 and WSe2 monolayers and multilayers. The efficiency of second harmonic generation shows a dramatic even-odd oscillation with the number of layers, consistent with the presence (absence) of inversion symmetry in even-layer (odd-layer). Photoluminescence (PL) measurements show the crossover from an indirect band gap semiconductor at mutilayers to a direct-gap one at monolayers. The PL spectra and first-principle calculations consistently reveal a spin-valley coupling of 0.4 eV which suppresses interlayer hopping and manifests as a thickness independent splitting pattern at valence band edge near K points. This giant spin-valley coupling, together with the valley dependent physical properties, may lead to rich possibilities for manipulating spin and valley degrees of freedom in these atomically thin 2D materials.
We report experimental evidences on selective occupation of the degenerate valleys in MoS2 monolayers by circularly polarized optical pumping. Over 30% valley polarization has been observed at K and K' valley via the polarization resolved luminescence spectra on pristine MoS2 monolayers. It demonstrates one viable way to generate and detect valley polarization towards the conceptual valleytronics applications with information carried by the valley index.
We report observation of magneto-electric photocurrent generated via direct inter-band transitions in an InGaAs/InAlAs two-dimensional electron gas excited by a linearly polarized incident light.The electric current is proportional to the in-plane magnetic field which unbalances the velocities of the photoexcited carriers with opposite spins and consequently generates electric current from a spin photocurrent. The observed light polarization dependence of the electric current is explained microscopically by taking into account of the anisotropy of the photoexcited carrier density in wave vector space. The spin photocurrent can be extracted from the measured current and the conversion coefficient of spin photocurrent to electric current is estimated to be $10^{-3}$$\sim$$10^{-2}$ per Tesla.
The knowledge of electron g factor is essential for spin manipulation in the field of spintronics and quantum computing. While there exist technical difficulties in determining the sign of g factor in semiconductors by the established magneto-optical spectroscopic methods. We develop a time resolved Kerr rotation technique to precisely measure the sign and the amplitude of electron g factor in semiconductors.
Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are quasi-one-dimensional systems with poor Coulomb screening and enhanced electron-phonon interaction, and are good candidates for excitons and exciton-phonon couplings in metallic state. Here we report back scattering reflection experiments on individual metallic SWCNTs. An exciton-phonon sideband separated by 0.19 eV from the first optical transition peak is observed in a metallic SWCNT of chiral index (13,10), which provides clear evidences of excitons in metallic SWCNTs. A static dielectric constant of 10 is estimated from the reflectance spectrum.
Electron spin dynamics in InAs/GaAs heterostructures consisting of a single layer of InAs (1/3$\sim$1 monolayer) embeded in (001) and (311)A GaAs matrix was studied by means of time-resolved Kerr rotation spectroscopy. The spin relaxation time of the sub-monolayer InAs samples is significantly enhanced, compared with that of the monolayer InAs sample. We attributed the slowing of the spin relaxation to dimensionally constrained D\textquoteright{}yakonov-Perel\textquoteright{} mechanism in the motional narrowing regime. The electron spin relaxation time and the effective g-factor in sub-monolayer samples were found to be strongly dependent on the photon-generated carrier density. The contribution from both D\textquoteright{}yakonov-Perel\textquoteright{} mechanism and Bir-Aronov-Pikus mechanism were discussed to interpret the temperature dependence of spin decoherence at various carrier densities.
We report a measurement on quantum capacitance of individual semiconducting and small band gap SWNTs. The observed quantum capacitance is remarkably smaller than that originating from density of states and it implies a strong electron correlation in SWNTs.