TY - JOUR

T1 - Femtosecond Field-Driven On-Chip Unidirectional Electronic Currents in Nonadiabatic Tunneling Regime

AU - Shi, Liping

AU - Babushkin, Ihar

AU - Husakou, Anton

AU - Melchert, Oliver

AU - Frank, Bettina

AU - Yi, Juemin

AU - Wetzel, Gustav

AU - Demircan, Ayhan

AU - Lienau, Christoph

AU - Giessen, Harald

AU - Ivanov, Misha

AU - Morgner, Uwe

AU - Kovacev, Milutin

N1 - Funding Information: L.S. and I.B. contributed equally to this work. The authors acknowledge support from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (KO 3798/4‐1, BA 4156/4‐2, MO 850‐19/2, MO 850‐23/1) and from German Research Foundation under Germany's Excellence Strategy EXC‐2123 and Germany's Excellence Strategy within the Cluster of Excellence PhoenixD (EXC 2122, Project ID 390833453), Lower Saxony through 'Quanten und Nanometrologie' (QUANOMET, Project Nanophotonik). H.G. and B.F. acknowledge funding by ERC (ComplexPlas and 3D Printedoptics) and DFG (SPP1839). A.H. acknowledges funding from MSCA RISE project ID 823897. C.L. gratefully fully acknowledges the DFG (SPP 1839 and SPP1840) for financial support. L.S. is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 12004314), the open project program of Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics No. 2020WNLOKF004 and Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. Q21A040010. MI acknowledges support by the DFG priority program QUTIF under grant agreement IV 152/6‐2 and the funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 899794.

PY - 2021/8

Y1 - 2021/8

N2 - Recently, asymmetric plasmonic nanojunctions [Karnetzky et. al., Nature Comm. 2471, 9 (2018)] have shown promise as on-chip electronic devices to convert femtosecond optical pulses to current bursts, with a bandwidth of multi-terahertz scale, although yet at low temperatures and pressures. Such nanoscale devices are of great interest for novel ultrafast electronics and opto-electronic applications. Here, we operate the device in air and at room temperature, revealing the mechanisms of photoemission from plasmonic nanojunctions, and the fundamental limitations on the speed of optical-to-electronic conversion. Inter-cycle interference of coherent electronic wavepackets results in a complex energy electron distribution and birth of multiphoton effects. This energy structure, as well as reshaping of the wavepackets during their propagation from one tip to the other, determine the ultrafast dynamics of the current. We show that, up to some level of approximation, the electron flight time is well-determined by the mean ponderomotive velocity in the driving field.

AB - Recently, asymmetric plasmonic nanojunctions [Karnetzky et. al., Nature Comm. 2471, 9 (2018)] have shown promise as on-chip electronic devices to convert femtosecond optical pulses to current bursts, with a bandwidth of multi-terahertz scale, although yet at low temperatures and pressures. Such nanoscale devices are of great interest for novel ultrafast electronics and opto-electronic applications. Here, we operate the device in air and at room temperature, revealing the mechanisms of photoemission from plasmonic nanojunctions, and the fundamental limitations on the speed of optical-to-electronic conversion. Inter-cycle interference of coherent electronic wavepackets results in a complex energy electron distribution and birth of multiphoton effects. This energy structure, as well as reshaping of the wavepackets during their propagation from one tip to the other, determine the ultrafast dynamics of the current. We show that, up to some level of approximation, the electron flight time is well-determined by the mean ponderomotive velocity in the driving field.

KW - cond-mat.mes-hall

KW - physics.optics

KW - ionization

KW - nanostructures

KW - optoelectronics

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85108061098&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1002/lpor.202000475

DO - 10.1002/lpor.202000475

M3 - Article

VL - 15

JO - Laser & photonics reviews

JF - Laser & photonics reviews

SN - 1863-8880

IS - 8

M1 - 2000475

ER -