Mesoscopic dots as collective terahertz oscillators


Mesoscopic dots as collective terahertz oscillators

Metzner, C.; Stehr, D.

Electrons confined in a flat semiconductor quantum dot with a parabolic in-plane potential act like a collective many-particle oscillator under coherent intraband excitation. We investigate theoretically the properties of these oscillators under a simultaneous scale transformation of the lateral dimensions and the electron occupation number. As the lateral size increases from a few nm (typical for self-assembled dots) to the mesoscopic regime, the physics of the system is changing qualitatively: Quantization effects gradually lose importance against Coulomb interactions and eventually the electron lake in a mesoscopic dot resembles a classical Wigner liquid. This parabolically confined "Wigner lake" behaves to the outside like a form-elastic "superparticle" of high charge. It can be coherently controlled by THz dipole radiation just like a single electron, but with reduced Brownian diffusion in the phonon heat bath. We propose a flexible method to fabricate single mesoscopic!
dots of a controlled shape, Coulomb-coupled groups of dots, and almost arbitrary potential landscapes, using current semiconductor technology. As a first example, the collective modes of two Coulomb-coupled superparticles in neighboring dots are calculated. Also, we consider the possibility of steering a superparticle with shaped laser pulses to follow any complex two-dimensional orbit.

  • Physical Review B 7019(2004)19, 5433-5433

Permalink: https://www.hzdr.de/publications/Publ-7217
Publ.-Id: 7217