Prospects of developing computing and communication technologies based
on quantum properties of light and matter may have taken a major step
forward thanks to research by City College of New York physicists led by
Dr. Vinod Menon.
In a pioneering study, Professor Menon and his team were able to
discover half-light, half-matter particles in atomically thin
semiconductors (thickness ~ a millionth of a single sheet of paper)
consisting of two-dimensional (2D) layer of molybdenum and sulfur atoms
arranged similar to graphene. They sandwiched this 2D material in a
light trapping structure to realize these composite quantum particles.
"Besides being a fundamental breakthrough, this opens up the
possibility of making devices which take the benefits of both light and
matter," said Professor Menon.
For example one can start envisioning logic gates and signal
processors that take on best of light and matter. The discovery is also
expected to contribute to developing practical platforms for quantum
computing.
Dr. Dirk Englund, a professor at MIT whose research focuses on
quantum technologies based on semiconductor and optical systems, hailed
the City College study.
"What is so remarkable and exciting in the work by Vinod and his team
is how readily this strong coupling regime could actually be achieved.
They have shown convincingly that by coupling a rather standard
dielectric cavity to exciton-polaritons in a monolayer of molybdenum
disulphide, they could actually reach this strong coupling regime with a
very large binding strength," he said.
Professor Menon's research team included City College PhD students,
Xiaoze Liu, Tal Galfsky and Zheng Sun, and scientists from Yale
University, National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan) and Ecole Polytechnic
-Montreal (Canada).
The study was funded by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory's Army
Research Office and the National Science Foundation through the
Materials Research Science and Engineering Center -- Center for Photonic
and Multiscale Nanomaterials.
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