We demonstrated the visualization of quantized vortices in superfluid helium with silicon nanoparticles. Nanoparticles were produced in situ with pulsed laser ablation and dispersed within the superfluid helium. The dispersed nanoparticles were utilized to decorate the quantized vortices, allowing for the imaging and visualization of the dynamics of the vortices, such as vortex reconnection.
Magnetic trapping and optical manipulation of micro-particles are combined in superfluid helium. Irradiation of pulsed light to a magnetically trapped superconducting particle causes simple damped oscillation of the particle. The analysis of the trajectory gives rise to the estimation of viscosity of the superfluid helium along with some properties of the trapped particle.
Nanodiamonds (NDs) containing silicon- or germanium-vacancy centers (SiV- or GeV-NDs, respectively) have shown promising potential as fluorescent markers for bioapplications. Recently fabrications of ~10 nm-sized SiV- and GeV-NDs were demonstrated by a detonation process that enables practical-scale NDs production. In the present study, the optical properties of the SiV- and GeV-NDs, a recent addition to the family of fluorescent NDs, were spectroscopically investigated. Their luminescence bands including each zero-phonon line commonly have small Debye-Waller factors (0.47 and 0.20, respectively) and broad linewidths (32 and 59 meV, respectively) at room temperature, comparing with those of typical SiV and GeV centers. These differences in the optical properties were due to the effects of lattice distortions and surface potentials from tiny-sized diamonds. The SiV- and GeV-NDs fabricated by the detonation process are interesting materials not only in the biomedical field but also in the study of optical manipulation.
We demonstrated the optical trapping of silicon nanoparticles in superfluid helium. The silicon nanoparticles were produced via in-situ laser ablation in superfluid helium. The dispersed nanoparticles were optically trapped using near-infrared laser light. With the combination of semiconductor material and the wavelength of 1.5 μm, we can strongly suppress the heat generation in superfluid helium. The thermally stable situation provides us with an important platform for studying the fundamental properties of superfluid helium with the aid of the optical manipulation technique.
We fabricated semiconductor zinc oxide microspheres via the pulsed laser ablation in the superfluid helium. The
fabricated microspheres have a smooth surface and act as an optical microcavity showing whispering gallery mode
resonances. We observed the inner structure of the microspheres after milling the part of the microspheres using focused
ion beam. The observation of the milled surface reveals that some of the fabricated microspheres include voids. In particular,
the larger microspheres tend to have voids inside themselves. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the microspheres with
voids can have a high quality factor whispering gallery mode resonance if the void is positioned near the middle of the
volume.
Superfluid helium is an important model system to study quantum hydrodynamics. Numerous researches have been reported on fascinating phenomena including superfluidity, unusually low viscosity, and the emergence of the quantum vortex. Here, we demonstrated the visualization of the quantum vortices, which are intrinsically unable to be seen. We prepared many nanoparticles in superfluid helium by using the laser ablation technique. The fabricated nanoparticles are trapped at the core of the quantum vortices. By imaging the scattered light from the nanoparticles, we visualized the motion of the quantum vortices.
A spherical superconducting micro-particle generated by laser ablation in superfluid helium is trapped in a quadrupole magnetic field. Utilizing the property that the particle is isolated in space, observation of the Mie scattering from this particle has been carried out. Analyzing the results, information on the optical properties of superconducting microparticle and their shapes at helium temperature have been deduced.
We synthesized cadmium sulfide (CdS) submicron particles in reverse micelles. We chose the surfactants and the water-to-surfactant molar ratio to influence the formation of reverse micelles such that their average size was 100 nm. The actual size of the particles that we synthesized was consistent with the expected reverse micelle size. The synthesized CdS particles exhibited a strong photoluminescence that comprised an interband emission with a quantum confinement effect and a broad emission that originated from the surface trap states. When combined with the blueshifted absorption edge seen in the submicron particle solution, our prepared submicron particles were an aggregation of semiconductor quantum dots. The submicron-size semiconductor particle is appropriate as an optical trapping target in a variety environments and is beneficial for sophisticated resonant optical manipulation, including enhanced optical trapping force and recoil force manipulation.
We report on the observation of similar temperature dependences of PL intensities of AgInGaS nanoparticles and AgInGaS / GaSx core–shell nanoparticles. The intensity of band-edge emission in AgInGaS / GaSx increases with temperature up to 200 K, and the intensity at room temperature is on the order of that at 5 K. Using a model that includes effects of thermal activation of carriers from trap states, we propose that a shallow trap state exists in the AgInGaS core, and the higher PL intensity of the band-edge emission at 200 K is due to the radiative recombination of carriers that have been thermally activated from the shallow state. Time-resolved PL measurements are employed to support this interpretation.
We demonstrate ultrafast superradiance showing 10-fs decay due to the nonlocal interaction between light waves and exciton waves in CuCl mesoscopic thin films. This time constant is comparable with the thermal dephasing even at room temperature. Actually, we observed photoluminescence signal from one confined mode of translational motion of the exciton surviving at room temperature. In addition, temperature dependence of the photoluminescence spectra with multiple peaks was reproduced well by theoretical calculation. This finding opens a new avenue of “thermal free photonics”, where the exciton coherence is utilized at higher temperature.
Laser ablation in superfluid helium, having extremely low temperature, negligibly small viscosity, huge thermal conductivity, and high transparency in visible region, provides us a unique opportunity to fabricate novel microstructures and control their motion. We have successfully fabricated nano and micro spheres of semiconductors by the laser ablation in the superfluid helium with a nanosecond Nd:YAG laser. [Scientific Reports 4, 5186 (2014).] Recently, we applied this method to metals, such as indium and rhenium, which show superconductivity at low temperature. To select superconducting particles, we utilized perfect diamagnetism caused by Meissner effect, designing a magnetic trap with two permanent magnets for the superconducting particles. Thus we fabricated and trapped a single or several superconducting particles after the laser ablation in the superfluid helium [Applied Physics Express 10, 022701(2017).] Here we successfully control the positions of the magnetically trapped superconducting particles, by irradiating a laser to them. The particles were pushed away from their original trapped positions and after the irradiation released from the displaced positions, moving along the force of the trapping potential and the viscosity force of the superfluid helium. By tracking the particles motion we can deduce physical properties of the superfluid helium and trapped particles. Thus the optical fabrication and manipulation of the superconducting micro particles provide us a unique opportunity to investigate superfluidity and superconductivity.
Micro-resonators with small mode volume and high quality factor are widely used to enhance the interaction between light and matter. On the other hand, simple semiconductor thin films with high crystallinity, which provide long coherent length of the wave functions of center-of-mass motion of excitons, bring about size dependent enhancement of the interaction caused by nonlocal wave-wave coupling between light and exciton beyond long wavelength approximation. Actually, we found peculiar optical responses, e.g. large energy shift and sub-picosecond radiative decay of the weakly confined excitons in CuCl thin films with thickness of hundreds of nm [Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 257401 (2009)]. Recently, thickness dependence of radiative decay rate was clearly observed in a single crystal Cu2O film with continuously varying thickness (16-1000 nm) [Phys. Rev. B 97, 205305 (2018)]. In the case of ZnO, where A and B excitons closely located, the radiation-induced interaction between the two excitons, which further enhances the energy shift and radiative decay rate, is theoretically predicted [Phys. Rev. B 94, 045441 (2016)]. Therefore, we investigated ZnO thin films by transient grating spectroscopy. The samples were fabricated by pulsed laser deposition on Al2O3 substrates. We confirmed that the measured spectra reflect the shapes of the calculated spectra based on the theory. Moreover, we found the temporal profile of the signal shows ultrafast decay faster than 100 fs at 5 K in the film with a thickness of 289 nm. The results show that strong spatial interaction between light and excitons is realized in multicomponent excitonic systems.
We fabricated cadmium selenide nanoparticles using a pulsed laser-ablation scheme in superfluid helium. The fabricated nanoparticles showed photoluminescence blinking and a clear blueshifted emission whose linewidth was nearly equal to the homogeneous linewidth. These results demonstrate that our method can prepare quantum dots with a sharp resonance directly in superfluid helium, enabling the further implementation of resonant optical manipulation and optical trapping in cryogenic systems.
We fabricated semiconductor cadmium selenide (CdSe) quantum dots via the pulsed laser ablation in the superfluid helium. The fabricated quantum dots showed blue-shifted fluorescence due to the strong quantum confinement effect. The fluorescence blinking phenomena were also observed indicating the single photon emission process. Our proposed scheme is a simple, robust, and reliable method to fabricate quantum dots and to introduce the highly fluorescence nanoparticles into superfluid helium appropriate for resonant optical manipulation and nano-tracers for liquid helium visualization.
We have produced superconducting sub-micron particles by laser ablation in superfluid helium and trapped them using quadrupole magnetic field due to the diamagnetism.
Superfluid helium having extremely low temperature, negligibly small viscosity, and huge thermal conductivity provides us a unique opportunity to generate a novel cryogenic space for the fabrication of nanostructures and the manipulation of their motion. Here we fabricated metallic nano- and micro-particles by laser ablation in superfluid helium and selectively trapped superconducting particles with a quadrupole magnetic field utilizing perfect diamagnetism caused by Meissner effect. We also discuss the size dependence of the superconducting transition temperatures of the trapped metallic particles by changing the temperature of liquid helium.
We fabricated semiconductor ZnO microspheres via the pulsed laser ablation in the superfluid helium. The scanning
electron microscope observation revealed the high sphericity and smooth surface. We also observed whispering gallery
mode resonances, the electromagnetic eigenmode resonances within the microspheres, in the cathodoluminescence
spectrum, verifying the high symmetry of the fabricated microspheres. Further, we cross-sectioned the microspheres with
using focused ion beam. The scanning electron microscope observation of the cross section uncovers the existence of
small holes within the microspheres. The inner structure examination helps us to understand the microscopic mechanism
of our fabrication method.
We have produced superconducting sub-micron particles by laser ablation in
superfluid helium and trapped them using quadrupole magnetic field due to the diamagnetism.
We demonstrate the arbitrary control of the carrier-envelope phase of intense few-cycle THz pulses by using a simple passive component with high transmission efficiency based on a parallel metal plate waveguide. In this component, the carrier-envelope phase is altered by using the difference between the group and phase velocities. We demonstrate pulseshape- dependent nonlinear spectroscopy using these passive optics for Ge:Sb, where strong transitions between the shallow acceptor levels are located at 2.0 THz.
One of the most important techniques in modern optical science is the generation of phase-locked pulses. We review two different approaches to achieve the broadband generation and detection: photoconductive antenna and air-plasma method, and show the application to spectroscopy. We investigated dependences of the detection sensitivity on the growth and annealing conditions of antenna substrate, antenna structure, and the gate pulse duration. We successfully generated ultra-broadband phase-locked pulses in the terahertz and infrared regions (up to ∼200 THz) using a combination of organic nonlinear crystals and 5-fs ultrashort laser pulses, which is directly detected by an optimized photoconductive antenna. With a combination of air plasma and intense 10-fs pulses, we also achieved the generation and detection of ultra-broadband phase-locked pulses continuously from the terahertz region to the near-infrared region. The methods are applied to the spectroscopy of superconducting gaps. Our results demonstrate that the broadband phase-locked pulses can easily be generated and detected without explicit carrier envelope phase stabilization, and can be used for broadband spectroscopy.
We succeeded in fabricating ZnO microspheres with high sphericity by laser ablation in superfluid helium. Such
microspheres enable efficient lasing in the whole visible region due to defects with a CW laser at room temperature. The
lasing threshold is found to be around 100 W/cm2. This value is much smaller than those of the recent reports on the
lasing in ZnO microwire. Cathodoluminescence of single ZnO microspheres was also measured.
We have experimentally demonstrated purely optical manipulation of wide-gap semiconductor CuCl quantum dots in
superfluid helium. The superfluidity provides an ideal cryogenic frictionless environment for the manipulation. In order
to introduce the quantum dots into liquid helium, small particles of CuCl with a broad size-distribution ranging from 10
nm to 10 &mgr;m in radius have been fabricated from a bulk sample by laser ablation in a helium cryostat. We irradiated
these particles with laser light covering the excitonic resonance levels of the quantum dots smaller than 50 nm to push
them by using resonant radiation force. As a result, we have found that many quantum dots of which sizes range from 10
to 50 nm were transported and sorted over a macroscopic distance, ~1 cm. Importantly, the excitonic resonance condition
was crucial for this optical manipulation. The result means that the resonant radiation force for the quantum dots is much
stronger than the gravitational force. Feasibility of size-selective manipulation is also discussed.
Temperature dependence of spectral and temporal behaviors of resonant emission in NaNO2 has been investigated under the excitation of the isotopic 15NO2-molecule. It has been found that time response of the exciton line includes a rise component and can be interpreted by taking account of the transfer from the isotopic level. Time-resolved spectra of the exciton line under the excitation of the isotropic molecule shows broadening with the evolution of time. Spectral and temporal behaviors of the line reflect the transfer from the isotopic level as well as the thermalization of the excitons within the exciton band.
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