Shaping long-lived electron wavepackets for customizable optical spectra
© 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement Electrons in atoms and molecules are versatile physical systems allowing a vast range of light–matter interactions. Spontaneous emission, which appears in a wide variety of applications, depends crucially o...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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The Optical Society
2021
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132375 |
| _version_ | 1826209087728123904 |
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| author | Dangovski, Rumen Rivera, Nicholas Soljačić, Marin Kaminer, Ido |
| author_facet | Dangovski, Rumen Rivera, Nicholas Soljačić, Marin Kaminer, Ido |
| author_sort | Dangovski, Rumen |
| collection | MIT |
| description | © 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement Electrons in atoms and molecules are versatile physical systems allowing a vast range of light–matter interactions. Spontaneous emission, which appears in a wide variety of applications, depends crucially on the bound electron energy levels. The discrete nature of these electron energy levels and the ionization threshold constrain the energy scale of all light–matter interactions involving bound electrons. To bypass these constraints, we take ideas from optical and electronic beam shaping and propose creating new electron states as superpositions of extended states above the ionization threshold. We show that such superpositions enable the control of spontaneous emission with tunable spectra in the eV–keV range. We find that the specific shaping lengthens the diffraction and radiative lifetimes of the wavepackets in exchange for increasing their spatial spreads. Our approach could have applications toward developing novel kinds of light emitters at hard-to-access spectral ranges. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T14:17:03Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/132375 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T14:17:03Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publisher | The Optical Society |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1323752021-09-21T03:21:56Z Shaping long-lived electron wavepackets for customizable optical spectra Dangovski, Rumen Rivera, Nicholas Soljačić, Marin Kaminer, Ido © 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement Electrons in atoms and molecules are versatile physical systems allowing a vast range of light–matter interactions. Spontaneous emission, which appears in a wide variety of applications, depends crucially on the bound electron energy levels. The discrete nature of these electron energy levels and the ionization threshold constrain the energy scale of all light–matter interactions involving bound electrons. To bypass these constraints, we take ideas from optical and electronic beam shaping and propose creating new electron states as superpositions of extended states above the ionization threshold. We show that such superpositions enable the control of spontaneous emission with tunable spectra in the eV–keV range. We find that the specific shaping lengthens the diffraction and radiative lifetimes of the wavepackets in exchange for increasing their spatial spreads. Our approach could have applications toward developing novel kinds of light emitters at hard-to-access spectral ranges. 2021-09-20T18:22:06Z 2021-09-20T18:22:06Z 2020-11-09T17:31:18Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132375 en 10.1364/OPTICA.6.001089 Optica Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. application/pdf The Optical Society OSA Publishing |
| spellingShingle | Dangovski, Rumen Rivera, Nicholas Soljačić, Marin Kaminer, Ido Shaping long-lived electron wavepackets for customizable optical spectra |
| title | Shaping long-lived electron wavepackets for customizable optical spectra |
| title_full | Shaping long-lived electron wavepackets for customizable optical spectra |
| title_fullStr | Shaping long-lived electron wavepackets for customizable optical spectra |
| title_full_unstemmed | Shaping long-lived electron wavepackets for customizable optical spectra |
| title_short | Shaping long-lived electron wavepackets for customizable optical spectra |
| title_sort | shaping long lived electron wavepackets for customizable optical spectra |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132375 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT dangovskirumen shapinglonglivedelectronwavepacketsforcustomizableopticalspectra AT riveranicholas shapinglonglivedelectronwavepacketsforcustomizableopticalspectra AT soljacicmarin shapinglonglivedelectronwavepacketsforcustomizableopticalspectra AT kaminerido shapinglonglivedelectronwavepacketsforcustomizableopticalspectra |