Quasi-particule | EPFL Graph Search

Les quasi-particules, ou quasiparticules, sont des entités conçues comme des particules et facilitant la description des systèmes de particules, particulièrement en physique de la matière condensée. Parmi les plus connues, on distingue les trous d'électrons qui peuvent être vus comme un "manque d'électron", et les phonons, qui décrivent des "paquets de vibration". Vue d'ensemble Introduction Les solides sont formés de trois types de particules : les électrons, les protons et les neutrons. Bien qu'elles ne fassent pas partie de ces dernières,les quasi-particules sont plutôt issues des interactions dans le solide. On ne peut donc pas s'attendre à déceler une quasi-particule dans le vide, à la différence des particules (électrons, protons, neutrons). Décrire le mouvement des particules dans le solide est ardu. Chaque électron et chaque proton interagit, jusqu'à un certain degré, avec tous les autres électrons et protons du système (par la loi de Coulomb), ce qui

Kinks in the angle resolved photoemission and inelastic x-ray spectra of high temperature superconductors

Jeff Graf

Though the high superconducting transition temperature (Tc) is the most interesting technological aspect of high temperature superconductors, the complex way in which the spin, lattice and electronic degrees of freedom interplay, makes them of the highest scientific interest. This is illustrated by their rich phase diagram characterized by a variety of exotic groundstate including; Mott insulating, pseudogap and high temperature superconductivity. One of the most serious barriers that has prevented our understanding of the mechanism of high temperature superconductors thus far is the lack of information on how low energy Landau quasiparticles result from an organization of real particles. This organization, often colloquially referred to as "dressing", is a fundamental general concept in physics that explains a variety of physical phenomena, such as exotic particle formations and phase transitions. The role of the lattice in this dressing is particularly controversial. Phonons are quanta of lattice vibration energy, and play a crucial role in conventional superconductivity. They provide an attractive interaction allowing the electrons to condensate in superconducting Cooper pairs. However, high temperature superconductivity in the cuprates in achieved through hole doping in an antiferromagnetic Mott insulator. In this case, the antiferromagnetic background, the strong coulomb repulsion and the anisotropic superconducting gap all suggest a marginal role of the phonons. In order to assess experimentally the exact role of the phonon, angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) is the weapon of choice given its unique ability to probe the electronic structure of solids in an energy- and momentum-resolved manner. In this thesis, I will use ARPES to characterize the various form of dressing of the quasiparticles in the high temperature superconductor from the Fermi level all the way to the valence band complex. I'll show that when combined with isotope substitution and inelastic x-rays scattering, the strong electron-phonon interaction can be probed in vivid details. This thesis presents three fundamental results. 1) Using the isotope effect, the important and unusual role of the phonon is demonstrated, as well as the strong interplay between the magnetic and phonic degrees of freedom. 2) Using inelastic scattering, the intriguing interplay between the Fermi surface and the bond stretching phonon is exposed. And 3) By exploring the ARPES data up to high energy, two new energy scales at high binding energy as well as the spectral waterfalls phenomenon are revealed. When all these new elements are considered together, they clearly show the need to consider simultaneously the spin, lattice, Fermi surface topology and electronic degrees of freedom. The spectacular progress in ARPES techniques over the past two decades was critical for these results, and I will present in this thesis our current effort in pushing the techniques even further. In particular I'll present my efforts in building a laser based ARPES setup with a hemispherical analyzer and a spin resolved time of flight analyzer.

EPFL2008

Interaction of Confined Polaritons in Microcavity Structures

Morteza Navadeh Toupchi

A polariton is a quasiparticle formed from the coupling of a confined photon in a cavity to electronic excitation, like exciton in a semiconductor. This dissertation reports on series of experiments in confined polariton interaction by design, fabrication, and characterization of semiconductor microcavity structures operating in strong or weak coupling regime. In the first part of the thesis, we mainly concentrate on the optical study of the 2D microcavity sample, including spin-dependent lower-upper polariton cross interactions by pump-probe spectroscopy technique, supported by theoretical analyses and numerical simulations based on Gross-Pitaevskii equations. In particular, we present a scattering resonance behavior via an exciton molecule (biexciton) when polaritons from both the upper and lower branches with anti-parallel spins are involved through a polaritonic cross Feshbach resonance. This demonstration will permit the control of the polariton interbranch scattering. The second part of the thesis is dedicated to the design and fabrication of the potentials where the photonic part of polaritons is confined laterally by adjusting the thickness of the cavity layer locally in so-called mesa structures. By engineering a periodic lattice of mesas on a two-dimensional microcavity, it is possible to couple confined polariton modes of nearby mesas to establish an optical lattice analogous to the crystalline semiconductorsâ electronic band structures. We especially demonstrate the localization of light with a lasing mode at the edge of the Brillouin zone in a two-dimensional triangular lattice. We produce a self-trapping of light by optically inducing a local breaking of the strong-coupling regime of excitons to photons. In the weak coupling regime, we control the confined modes by the shape of the generated defect. We also reveal a controllable localization degree and experimental signature of the Anderson localization in microcavity polaritons by inducing positional disorder in the triangular lattice. The last part is devoted to the fabrication of sub-micron size mesas to enhance polariton interaction by confining them tightly and discuss the quantum correlation of polaritons by a Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) setting toward polariton blockade.

EPFL2021