Shining quick, repeating pulses of light on different materials is a potent way to create new quantum states. This approach, known as Floquet engineering, drives electrons out of their usual balance in a material, changing its electronic properties in unique ways that researchers hope to exploit for emerging technologies like quantum sensors, optoelectronics, and ultrafast information processing.
But the lasers required to drive these electronic outcomes have been impractical for practical applications: they are large, expensive, and potentially damaging to the materials they are supposed to manipulate. With the support of a three-year, three-million-dollar award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), a team of researchers at Columbia and the University of Michigan will explore better ways to create Floquet-engineered quantum systems.
“With AFRL & NSF support, our team will augment the Floquet physics with advanced photonics solutions to create a new generation of compact quantum devices,” said Dmitri Basov, Higgins Professor of Physics at Columbia and Principal Investigator of the award, which was announced on August 18.
The research team includes mechanical engineer James Schuck and physicists Abhay Pasupathy, Ana Asenjo Garcia, and James McIver from Columbia, as well as physicist Hui Deng from the University of Michigan.
They will focus their efforts on moire materials and use nano-optical techniques, like cavities, to enhance the interactions between light and the material by an order of magnitude, all while reducing the power needed to create the desired quantum effects at terahertz optical frequencies.
They aim to make Floquet engineering low-power, compatible with various materials, including two-dimensional semiconductors, superconductors, and magnetic systems, and chip-sized. “Quantum physics “to go”,” noted Basov, “is an aspirational goal of our collaborative team.”
