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Stark control of electrons along nanojunctions

Ultrafast control of currents on the nanoscale is essential for future innovations in nanoelectronics. Recently it was experimentally demonstrated that strong non-resonant few-cycle 4 fs laser pulses can be used to induce phase-controllable currents along gold–silica–gold nanojunctions in the absenc...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Chen, Liping, Zhang, Yu, Chen, GuanHua, Franco, Ignacio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5970263/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29802292
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04393-4
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author Chen, Liping
Zhang, Yu
Chen, GuanHua
Franco, Ignacio
author_facet Chen, Liping
Zhang, Yu
Chen, GuanHua
Franco, Ignacio
author_sort Chen, Liping
collection PubMed
description Ultrafast control of currents on the nanoscale is essential for future innovations in nanoelectronics. Recently it was experimentally demonstrated that strong non-resonant few-cycle 4 fs laser pulses can be used to induce phase-controllable currents along gold–silica–gold nanojunctions in the absence of a bias voltage. However, since the effect depends on a highly non-equilibrium state of matter, its microscopic origin is unclear and the subject of recent controversy. Here we present atomistically detailed (time-dependent non-equilibrium Green’s function) electronic transport simulations that recover the main experimental observations and offer a simple intuitive picture of the effect. The photoinduced currents are seen to arise due to a difference in effective silica-metal coupling for negative and positive field amplitudes induced by lasers with low temporal symmetry. These insights can be employed to interpret related experiments, and advance our ability to control electrons in matter using lasers.
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spelling pubmed-59702632018-05-29 Stark control of electrons along nanojunctions Chen, Liping Zhang, Yu Chen, GuanHua Franco, Ignacio Nat Commun Article Ultrafast control of currents on the nanoscale is essential for future innovations in nanoelectronics. Recently it was experimentally demonstrated that strong non-resonant few-cycle 4 fs laser pulses can be used to induce phase-controllable currents along gold–silica–gold nanojunctions in the absence of a bias voltage. However, since the effect depends on a highly non-equilibrium state of matter, its microscopic origin is unclear and the subject of recent controversy. Here we present atomistically detailed (time-dependent non-equilibrium Green’s function) electronic transport simulations that recover the main experimental observations and offer a simple intuitive picture of the effect. The photoinduced currents are seen to arise due to a difference in effective silica-metal coupling for negative and positive field amplitudes induced by lasers with low temporal symmetry. These insights can be employed to interpret related experiments, and advance our ability to control electrons in matter using lasers. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-05-25 /pmc/articles/PMC5970263/ /pubmed/29802292 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04393-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Chen, Liping
Zhang, Yu
Chen, GuanHua
Franco, Ignacio
Stark control of electrons along nanojunctions
title Stark control of electrons along nanojunctions
title_full Stark control of electrons along nanojunctions
title_fullStr Stark control of electrons along nanojunctions
title_full_unstemmed Stark control of electrons along nanojunctions
title_short Stark control of electrons along nanojunctions
title_sort stark control of electrons along nanojunctions
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5970263/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29802292
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04393-4
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