Researchers at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have developed a coherent and controllable spin-optical laser based on a single atomic layer. This discovery is enabled by coherent spin-dependent interactions between a single atomic layer and a laterally confined photonic spin lattice, the latter of which supports high-Q spin-valley states through the photonic Rashba-type spin splitting of a bound state in the continuum.
Published in the prestigious journal Nature Materials and featured in the journal’s Research Briefing, the achievement paves the way to study coherent spin-dependent phenomena in both classical and quantum regimes, opening new horizons in fundamental research and optoelectronic devices exploiting both electron and photon spins.
The study was conducted in the research group of Professor Erez Hasman, head of the Atomic-Scale Photonics Laboratory, in collaboration with Professor Elad Koren, head of the Laboratory for Nanoscale Electronic Materials and Devices in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Professor Ariel Ismach at Tel Aviv University. The two groups at the Technion are in association with the Helen Diller Quantum Center and Russel Berrie Nanotechnology Institute. Dr. Kexiu Rong conducted and led the research, and collaborated with Dr. Xiaoyang Duan, Dr. Bo Wang, Dr. Vladimir Kleiner, Dr. Assael Cohen, Dr. Pranab K. Mohapatra, Dr. Avinash Patsha, Dr. Subhrajit Mukherjee, Dror Reichenberg, Chieh-li Liu, and Vladi Gorovoy.
Prof. Erez Hasman
Can we lift the spin degeneracy of light sources in the absence of magnetic fields at room temperature? According to Dr. Rong, “Spin-optical light sources combine photonic modes and electronic transitions and therefore provide a way to study the exchange of spin information between electrons and photons and to develop advanced optoelectronic devices. To construct these sources, a prerequisite is to lift the spin degeneracy between the two opposite spin states either in their photonic or electronic parts.
to read more