Electron Bath Research Articles

Radiatively Broadened Incandescent Sources

We study the incandescence of a semiconductor system characterized by a radiatively broadened material excitation. We show that the shape of the emission spectrum and the peak emissivity value are determined by the ratio between radiative and nonradiative relaxation rates of the material mode. Our system is a heavily doped quantum well, exhibiting a collective bright electronic excitation in the mid-infrared. The spontaneous emission rate of this collective mode strongly depends on the emission direction and, uncommonly for an intersubband system, can dominate nonradiative scattering processes. Consequently the incandescence spectrum undergoes strong modifications when the detection angle is varied. Incandescence is modeled solving quantum Langevin equations, including a microscopic description of the collective excitations, decaying into electronic and photonic baths. We demonstrate that the emissivity reaches unity value for a well-defined direction and presents an angular radiative pattern that is very...

Validity of the local self-energy approximation: Application to coupled quantum impurities

We examine the quality of the local self-energy approximation, applied here to models of multiple quantum impurities coupled to an electronic bath. The local self-energy is obtained by solving a single-impurity Anderson model in an effective medium that is determined self-consistently, similar to the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) for correlated lattice systems. By comparing to exact results obtained using the numerical renormalization group, we determine situations where "impurity-DMFT" is able to capture the physics of highly inhomogeneous systems, and those cases where it fails. For two magnetic impurities separated in real-space, the onset of the dilute limit is captured, but RKKY-dominated inter-impurity singlet formation cannot be described. For parallel quantum dot devices, impurity-DMFT succeeds in capturing underscreened Kondo physics by self-consistent generation of a critical pseudogapped effective medium. However, the quantum phase transition between high- and low-spin states on tuning interdot coupling cannot be described.

Undoped accumulation-mode Si/SiGe quantum dots

We report on a quantum dot device design that combines the low disorder properties of undoped SiGe heterostructure materials with an overlapping gate stack in which each electrostatic gate has a dominant and unique function—control of individual quantum dot occupancies and of lateral tunneling into and between dots. Control of the tunneling rate between a dot and an electron bath is demonstrated over more than nine orders of magnitude and independently confirmed by direct measurement within the bandwidth of our amplifiers. The inter-dot tunnel coupling at the charge configuration anti-crossing is directly measured to quantify the control of a single inter-dot tunnel barrier gate. A simple exponential dependence is sufficient to describe each of these tunneling processes as a function of the controlling gate voltage.

Magnetization Signatures of Light-Induced Quantum Hall Edge States.

Circularly polarized light opens a gap in the Dirac spectrum of graphene and topological insulator (TI) surfaces, thereby inducing a quantum Hall-like phase. We propose to detect the accompanying edge states and their current by the magnetic field they produce. The topological nature of the edge states is reflected in the mean orbital magnetization of the sample, which shows a universal linear dependence as a function of a generalized chemical potential-independent of the driving details and the properties of the material. The proposed protocol overcomes several typically encountered problems in the realization and measurement of Floquet phases, including the destructive effects of phonons and coupled electron baths and provides a way to occupy the induced edge states selectively. We estimate practical experimental parameters and conclude that the magnetization signature of the Floquet topological phase may be detectable with current techniques.

Electron–Phonon Energy Relaxation Time in Thin Strongly Disordered Titanium Nitride Films

We have measured the energy relaxation times from the electron bath to the phonon bath in strongly disordered TiN films grown by atomic layer deposition. The measured values of τ eph vary from 12 to 91 ns. Over a temperature range from 3.4 to 1.7 K, they follow T -3 temperature dependence, which are consistent with values of τ eph reported previously for sputtered TiN films. For the most disordered film, with an effective elastic mean free path of 0.35 nm, we find a faster relaxation and a stronger temperature dependence, which may be an additional indication of the influence of strong disorder on a superconductor.

Magnetization dynamics driven by non-equilibrium spin-orbit coupled electron gas

The dynamics of magnetization coupled with an electron gas via s-d exchange interaction is investigated by using the density matrix technique. Our theory shows that nonequilibrium spin accumulation induces a spin torque and the electron bath leads to a damping of the magnetization . For the two-dimensional magnetization thin film coupled to the electron gas with Rashba spin-orbit coupling, the result for the spin-orbit torques is consistent with previous semiclassical theory. However, our theory predicts a damping of the magnetization, which is absent in semiclassical theory. The magnitude of the damping due to the electron bath is comparable to the intrinsic Gilbert damping and may be important in describing the magnetization dynamics of the system.

Onset of optical-phonon cooling in multilayer graphene revealed by RF noise and black-body radiation thermometries

We report on electron cooling power measurements in few-layer graphene excited by Joule heating by means of a new setup combining electrical and optical probes of the electron and phonon baths temperatures. At low bias, noise thermometry allows us to retrieve the well known acoustic phonon cooling regimes below and above the Bloch-Grüneisen temperature, with additional control over the phonon bath temperature. At high electrical bias, we show the relevance of direct optical investigation of the electronic temperature by means of black-body radiation measurements. In this regime, the onset of new efficient relaxation pathways involving optical modes is observed.

Surface hopping with a manifold of electronic states. II. Application to the many-body Anderson-Holstein model.

We investigate a simple surface hopping (SH) approach for modeling a single impurity level coupled to a single phonon and an electronic (metal) bath (i.e., the Anderson-Holstein model). The phonon degree of freedom is treated classically with motion along--and hops between--diabatic potential energy surfaces. The hopping rate is determined by the dynamics of the electronic bath (which are treated implicitly). For the case of one electronic bath, in the limit of small coupling to the bath, SH recovers phonon relaxation to thermal equilibrium and yields the correct impurity electron population (as compared with numerical renormalization group). For the case of out of equilibrium dynamics, SH current-voltage (I-V) curve is compared with the quantum master equation (QME) over a range of parameters, spanning the quantum region to the classical region. In the limit of large temperature, SH and QME agree. Furthermore, we can show that, in the limit of low temperature, the QME agrees with real-time path integral calculations. As such, the simple procedure described here should be useful in many other contexts.

Surface hopping with a manifold of electronic states. I. Incorporating surface-leaking to capture lifetimes.

We investigate the incorporation of the surface-leaking (SL) algorithm into Tully's fewest-switches surface hopping (FSSH) algorithm to simulate some electronic relaxation induced by an electronic bath in conjunction with some electronic transitions between discrete states. The resulting SL-FSSH algorithm is benchmarked against exact quantum scattering calculations for three one-dimensional model problems. The results show excellent agreement between SL-FSSH and exact quantum dynamics in the wide band limit, suggesting the potential for a SL-FSSH algorithm. Discrepancies and failures are investigated in detail to understand the factors that will limit the reliability of SL-FSSH, especially the wide band approximation. Considering the easiness of implementation and the low computational cost, we expect this method to be useful in studying processes involving both a continuum of electronic states (where electronic dynamics are probabilistic) and processes involving only a few electronic states (where non-adiabatic processes cannot ignore short-time coherence).

On the intrinsic reactivity index for electrophilicity/nucleophilicity responses.

We present a critical discussion related to the recent definition of the intrinsic reactivity index, IRI, (Tetrahedron Lett. 2013, 54, 339-342; Tetrahedron 2013, 69, 4247-4258) formulated to describe both, electrophilicity (charge acceptance) and nucleophilicity (charge donation) reactivities. We here stress that such an IRI model, based on the quantity μ/η, should be properly related to theoretical approximations associated to the change in the global electronic energy of a given chemical system under interaction with a suitable electron bath (Gazquez JL et al. J Phys Chem A 2007, 111, 1966-1970). Further, the limitations of the IRI model are presented by emphasizing that the intrinsic relative scales of electrophilicity and nucleophilicity within a second-order perturbation approach must account for the further stabilization of the two interacting species (Chamorro E et al. J Phys Chem A 2013, 117, 2636-2643).

Spectroscopy of surface-induced noise using shallow spins in diamond.

We report on the noise spectrum experienced by few nanometer deep nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond as a function of depth, surface coating, magnetic field and temperature. Analysis reveals a double-Lorentzian noise spectrum consistent with a surface electronic spin bath in the low frequency regime, along with a faster noise source attributed to surface-modified phononic coupling. These results shed new light on the mechanisms responsible for surface noise affecting shallow spins at semiconductor interfaces, and suggests possible directions for further studies. We demonstrate dynamical decoupling from the surface noise, paving the way to applications ranging from nanoscale NMR to quantum networks.

Ultrafast electronic readout of diamond nitrogen-vacancy centres coupled to graphene.

Non-radiative transfer processes are often regarded as loss channels for an optical emitter because they are inherently difficult to access experimentally. Recently, it has been shown that emitters, such as fluorophores and nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond, can exhibit a strong non-radiative energy transfer to graphene. So far, the energy of the transferred electronic excitations has been considered to be lost within the electron bath of the graphene. Here we demonstrate that the transferred excitations can be read out by detecting corresponding currents with a picosecond time resolution. We detect electronically the spin of nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond and control the non-radiative transfer to graphene by electron spin resonance. Our results open the avenue for incorporating nitrogen-vacancy centres into ultrafast electronic circuits and for harvesting non-radiative transfer processes electronically.

SU‐E‐CAMPUS‐T‐02: Can Pre‐Treatment 4DCT‐Based Motion Margins Estimates Be Trusted for Proton Radiotherapy?

Purpose:Radiotherapy motion margins are generated using pre‐treatment 4DCT data. The purpose of this study is to assess if pre‐treatment 4DCT is sufficient in proton therapy to provide accurate estimate of motion margins. A dosimetric assessment is performed comparing pre‐treatment margins with daily‐customized margins.Methods:Gold fiducial markers implanted in lung tumors of patients were used to track the tumor. A spherical tumor of diameter 20 mm is inserted into a realistic digital respiratory phantom, where the tumor motion is based on real patient lung tumor trajectories recorded over multiple days. Using “Day 1” patient data, 100 ITVs were generated with 1 s interval between consecutive scan start times. Each ITV was made up by the union of 10 tumor positions obtained from 6 s scan time. Two ITV volumes were chosen for treatment planning: ITVmean‐σ and ITVmean+σ. The delivered dose was computed on i) 10 phases forming the planning ITV (“10‐phase” – simulating dose calculation based on 4DCT) and ii) 50 phantoms produced from 100 s of data from any other day with tumor positions sampled every 2 s (“dynamic” – simulating the dose that would actually be delivered).Results:For similar breathing patterns between “Day 1” and any other “Day N(>1)”, the 95% volume coverage (D95) for “dynamic” case was 8.13% lower than the “10‐phase” case for ITVmean+σ. For breathing patterns that were very different between “Day 1” and any other “Day N(>1)”, this difference was as high as 24.5% for ITVmean‐σ.Conclusion:Proton treatment planning based on pre‐treatment 4DCT can lead to under‐dosage of the tumor and over‐dosage of the surrounding tissues, because of inadequate estimate of the range of motion of the tumor. This is due to the shift of the Bragg peak compared to photon therapy in which the tumor is surrounded by an electron bath.

Theory of open quantum systems with bath of electrons and phonons and spins: Many-dissipaton density matrixes approach

This work establishes a strongly correlated system-and-bath dynamics theory, the many-dissipaton density operators formalism. It puts forward a quasi-particle picture for environmental influences. This picture unifies the physical descriptions and algebraic treatments on three distinct classes of quantum environments, electron bath, phonon bath, and two-level spin or exciton bath, as their participating in quantum dissipation processes. Dynamical variables for theoretical description are no longer just the reduced density matrix for system, but remarkably also those for quasi-particles of bath. The present theoretical formalism offers efficient and accurate means for the study of steady-state (nonequilibrium and equilibrium) and real-time dynamical properties of both systems and hybridizing environments. It further provides universal evaluations, exact in principle, on various correlation functions, including even those of environmental degrees of freedom in coupling with systems. Induced environmental dynamics could be reflected directly in experimentally measurable quantities, such as Fano resonances and quantum transport current shot noise statistics.

Analysis of low-energy response and possible emergent SU(4) Kondo state in a double quantum dot

We examine the low-energy behavior of a double quantum dot in a regime where spin and pseudospin excitations are degenerate. The individual quantum dots are described by Anderson impurity models with an on-site interaction $U$ which are capacitively coupled by an interdot interaction ${U}_{12}<U$. The low-energy response functions are expressed in terms of renormalized parameters, which can be deduced from an analysis of the fixed point in a numerical renormalization group calculation. At the point where the spin and pseudospin degrees of freedom become degenerate, the free quasiparticle excitations have a phase shift of $\ensuremath{\pi}/4$ and a 4-fold degeneracy. We find, however, when the quasiparticle interactions are included, that the low-energy effective model has SU(4) symmetry only in the special case ${U}_{12}=U$ unless both $U$ and ${U}_{12}$ are greater than $D$, the half bandwidth of the conduction electron bath. We show that the gate voltage dependence of the temperature-dependent differential conductance observed in recent experiments can be described by a quasiparticle density of states with temperature-dependent renormalized parameters.

Control of single-spin magnetic anisotropy by exchange coupling

The properties of quantum systems interacting with their environment, commonly called open quantum systems, can be affected strongly by this interaction. Although this can lead to unwanted consequences, such as causing decoherence in qubits used for quantum computation, it can also be exploited as a probe of the environment. For example, magnetic resonance imaging is based on the dependence of the spin relaxation times of protons in water molecules in a host's tissue. Here we show that the excitation energy of a single spin, which is determined by magnetocrystalline anisotropy and controls its stability and suitability for use in magnetic data-storage devices, can be modified by varying the exchange coupling of the spin to a nearby conductive electrode. Using scanning tunnelling microscopy and spectroscopy, we observe variations up to a factor of two of the spin excitation energies of individual atoms as the strength of the spin's coupling to the surrounding electronic bath changes. These observations, combined with calculations, show that exchange coupling can strongly modify the magnetic anisotropy. This system is thus one of the few open quantum systems in which the energy levels, and not just the excited-state lifetimes, can be renormalized controllably. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the magnetocrystalline anisotropy, a property normally determined by the local structure around a spin, can be tuned electronically. These effects may play a significant role in the development of spintronic devices in which an individual magnetic atom or molecule is coupled to conducting leads.

Non-Markovian response of ultrafast coherent electronic ring currents in chiral aromatic molecules in a condensed phase

Results of a theoretical study on non-Markov response for femtosecond laser-driven coherent ring currents in chiral aromatic molecules embedded in a condensed phase are presented. Coherent ring currents are generated by coherent excitation of a pair of quasi-degenerated π-electronic excited states. The coherent electronic dynamical behaviors are strongly influenced by interactions between the electronic system and phonon bath in a condensed phase. Here, the bath correlation time is not instantaneous but should be taken to be a finite time in ultrashort time-resolved experiments. In such a case, Markov approximation breaks down. A hierarchical master equation approach for an improved semiclassical Drude dissipation model was adopted to examine the non-Markov effects on ultrafast coherent electronic ring currents of (P)-2,2'-biphenol in a condensed phase. Time evolution of the coherent ring current derived in the hierarchical master equation approach was calculated and compared with those in the Drude model in the Markov approximation and in the static limit. The results show how non-Markovian behaviors in quantum beat signals of ring currents depend on the Drude bath damping constant. Effects of temperatures on ultrafast coherent electronic ring currents are also clarified.

A holographic model of the Kondo effect

We propose a model of the Kondo effect based on the Anti-de Sitter/Conformal Field Theory (AdS/CFT) correspondence, also known as holography. The Kondo effect is the screening of a magnetic impurity coupled anti-ferromagnetically to a bath of conduction electrons at low temperatures. In a (1+1)-dimensional CFT description, the Kondo effect is a renormalization group flow triggered by a marginally relevant (0+1)-dimensional operator between two fixed points with the same Kac-Moody current algebra. In the large-N limit, with spin SU(N) and charge U(1) symmetries, the Kondo effect appears as a (0+1)-dimensional second-order mean-field transition in which the U(1) charge symmetry is spontaneously broken. Our holographic model, which combines the CFT and large-N descriptions, is a Chern-Simons gauge field in (2+1)-dimensional AdS space, AdS3, dual to the Kac-Moody current, coupled to a holographic superconductor along an AdS2 subspace. Our model exhibits several characteristic features of the Kondo effect, including a dynamically generated scale, a resistivity with power-law behavior in temperature at low temperatures, and a spectral flow producing a phase shift. Our holographic Kondo model may be useful for studying many open problems involving impurities, including for example the Kondo lattice problem.

Stabilizing the magnetic moment of single holmium atoms by symmetry

Single magnetic atoms, and assemblies of such atoms, on non-magnetic surfaces have recently attracted attention owing to their potential use in high-density magnetic data storage and as a platform for quantum computing. A fundamental problem resulting from their quantum mechanical nature is that the localized magnetic moments of these atoms are easily destabilized by interactions with electrons, nuclear spins and lattice vibrations of the substrate. Even when large magnetic fields are applied to stabilize the magnetic moment, the observed lifetimes remain rather short (less than a microsecond). Several routes for stabilizing the magnetic moment against fluctuations have been suggested, such as using thin insulating layers between the magnetic atom and the substrate to suppress the interactions with the substrate's conduction electrons, or coupling several magnetic moments together to reduce their quantum mechanical fluctuations. Here we show that the magnetic moments of single holmium atoms on a highly conductive metallic substrate can reach lifetimes of the order of minutes. The necessary decoupling from the thermal bath of electrons, nuclear spins and lattice vibrations is achieved by a remarkable combination of several symmetries intrinsic to the system: time reversal symmetry, the internal symmetries of the total angular momentum and the point symmetry of the local environment of the magnetic atom.

Surface Reactivity Enhancement on a Pd/Bi2Te3 Heterostructure through Robust Topological Surface States

We present a study of the surface reactivity of a Pd/Bi2Te3 thin film heterostructure. The topological surface states from Bi2Te3, being delocalized and robust owing to their topological natures, were found to act as an effective electron bath that significantly enhances the surface reactivity of palladium in the presence of two oxidizing agents, oxygen and tellurium respectively, which is consistent with a theoretical calculation. The surface reactivity of the adsorbed tellurium on this heterostructure is also intensified possibly benefitted from the effective transfer of the bath electrons. A partially inserted iron ferromagnetic layer at the interface of this heterostructure was found to play two competing roles arising from the higher-lying d-band center of the Pd/Fe bilayer and the interaction between the ferromagnetism and the surface spin texture of Bi2Te3 on the surface reactivity and their characteristics also demonstrate that the electron bath effect is long-lasting against accumulated thickness of adsorbates.