In this thesis, intrinsic Josephson junctions, naturally formed in the strongly anisotropic high-temperature superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 (Bi-2212), are studied experimentally. For this purpose, small mesa structures are fabricated on the surface of single crystals using micro- and nano-fabrication tools, focused ion beam is used to reduce the area of the mesa-structures down to ≈ 1 × 1 μm2. The properties of charge transport across copper-oxide layers inside the mesas are studied by intrinsic tunneling spectroscopy. Temperature, bias and magnetic field dependences of current-voltage characteristics are examined. In the main part of the thesis, the behavior of intrinsic Josephson junctions in magnetic fields B parallel to the copper-oxide planes is studied. Parallel magnetic fields penetrate the junctions in the form of Josephson vortices (fluxons). At high magnetic fields, fluxons are arranged in a regular lattice and are accelerated by a sufficient high transport current. As the fluxon lattice is moving through the mesa, it emits electromagnetic waves in the important THz frequency range. Properties of Bi-2212 mesas in this flux-flow regime are studied in this thesis. The following new observations were made during the course of this work: a crossover from thermal activation above Tc to quantum tunneling below Tc is seen in the interlayer transport-mechanism, the Fraunhofer pattern of Ic(B) is observed clearly in Bi-2212, superluminal electromagnetic cavity resonances and phonon-polaritons are observed in Bi-2212. It is argued that the employed technique for miniaturization of mesas and the obtained results can be useful for a better understanding of fundamental properties of high-temperature superconductors and for the realizations of coherent flux-flow oscillators and coherent phonon-polariton generators in the important THz frequency range. / At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 6: Manuscript.

Submitted by Automa??o e Estat?stica (sst@bczm.ufrn.br) on 2017-05-31T20:37:34Z No. of bitstreams: 1 EdiRozemberghBrasileiroDaSilvaBrandao_TESE.pdf: 21206961 bytes, checksum: 7b22e84f9eeadd1446a3596114b8ad22 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Arlan Eloi Leite Silva (eloihistoriador@yahoo.com.br) on 2017-06-01T19:35:34Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 EdiRozemberghBrasileiroDaSilvaBrandao_TESE.pdf: 21206961 bytes, checksum: 7b22e84f9eeadd1446a3596114b8ad22 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-01T19:35:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 EdiRozemberghBrasileiroDaSilvaBrandao_TESE.pdf: 21206961 bytes, checksum: 7b22e84f9eeadd1446a3596114b8ad22 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-10-20 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior (CAPES) / Neste trabalho, apresentamos um estudo te?rico da propaga??o das ondas eletromagn?ticas em estruturas de multicamadas denominadas de Cristais Fot?nicos. Dentro deste escopo, este trabalho possui tr?s vertentes. Na primeira parte, estudamos teoricamente os espectros de transmiss?o em quasi-cristais fot?nicos unidimensionais, composta de materiais SiO2 (A) e TiO2 (B), organizada seguindo a sequ?ncia de Octonacci, onde o en?simo est?gio da multicamada Sn ? dado pela regra Sn=Sn-1Sn-2Sn-1, para n ? 3 e com S1=A e S2=B. A express?o de transmit?ncia foi obtido empregando um c?lculo te?rico baseado no m?todo da matriz de transfer?ncia. Para ondas incidentes normalmente, observamos que, para uma mesma gera??o, os espectros de transmiss?o para ondas transversais el?ctricas (TE) e ondas transversais magn?ticas (TM) s?o iguais ao menos de forma qualitativa, e eles apresentam uma propriedade de escala em que um comportamento auto-similar ? obtido, como uma evid?ncia de que esses espectros s?o fractais. Os espectros mostram regi?es onde os band gaps unidirecionais emergem para as gera??es espec?ficas da estrutura fot?nica de Octonacci, exceto para ondas TM. Para ondas TE, notamos que todos eles t?m quase a mesma largura, por diferentes gera??es. N?s tamb?m relatamos a localiza??o de modos como consequ?ncia da quase-periodicidade da heteroestrutura.Na segunda parte, investigamos os espectros de transmiss?o ?ptica para as ondas de polariza??o s (TE) e p (TM) em quasi-cristais fot?nicos unidimensionais em uma estrutura de multicamadas quase-peri?dicas composta por camadas alternadas de SiO2 e metamateriais, organizada seguindo a sequ?ncia de Octonacci. As equa??es de Maxwell e t?cnica da matriz de transfer?ncia s?o usadas para obter o espectro de transmiss?o para propaga??o de campos eletromagn?ticos incidentes normalmente e obliquamente. Assumimos a resposta dispersiva do tipo Drude-Lorentz para a permissividade diel?trica e permeabilidade magn?tica dos metamateriais. Para ondas incidentes normalmente, observamos que o espectro n?o tem comportamento auto-similar ou simetria espelho e tamb?m possui a aus?ncia de band gaps ?ptico. Tamb?m mostramos o surgimento de band gaps completos e pseudos refletores de Bragg (ou espelhos de Bragg).Na terceira e ?ltima parte, estudamos a propaga??o dos polaritons de plasmon em sistemas formados por multicamadas peri?dicas e quase-peri?dicas organizadas de acordo com a sequ?ncia de Octonacci, a partir da descri??o do comportamento dos seus modos de volume e de superf?cie. Atrav?s de c?lculo anal?tico e num?rico computacional, obtemos inicialmente os espectros de frequ?ncia dos polaritons de plasmon nestas superestruturas. Posteriormente, investigamos como a quase-periodicidade modifica a sua estrutura de bandas em rela??o ao caso peri?dico, induzindo os seus espectros a uma forma auto-similar, caracterizando a sua fractalidade/multifractalidade.

Tato diplomová práce se zabývala plazmonickými anténami pro infračervenou oblast spektra elektromagnetického záření. K hledání zesílení pole bylo použito FDTD (Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method) simulací. Podle očekávání, byla shledána lineární závislost rezonanční vlnové délky na délce raménka platinové antény na křemíkovém povrchu. Diplomová práce se také zabývala výrobou antén pomocí fokusovaného iontového svazku (FIB) a následným měřením rezonančních vlastností pomocí mikroskopické metody FT-IR (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy). Posun rezonanční vlnové délky byla registrována pouze pro negativní antény. Nakonec se tato práce zabývala vysvětlením saturace křivky závislosti rezonanční vlnové délky na rozměru raménka platinové antény na substrátu ze SRONu (silicon-rich oxynitride).

Motivated by the sustained interest in Bose Einstein condensates and the recent progress in the understanding of topological phases in condensed matter systems, we study quantum condensates and possible topological phases of bosons in coupled light-matter excitations, so-called polaritons. These bosonic quasi-particles emerge if electronic excitations (excitons) couple strongly to photons. In the first part of this thesis a polariton Bose Einstein condensate in the presence of disorder is investigated. In contrast to the constituents of a conventional condensate, such as cold atoms, polaritons have a finite life time. Then, the losses have to be compensated by continued pumping, and a non-thermal steady state can build up. We discuss how static disorder affects this non-equilibrium condensate, and analyze the stability of the superfluid state against disorder. We find that disorder destroys the quasi-long range order of the condensate wave function, and that the polariton condensate is not a superfluid in the thermodynamic limit, even for weak disorder, although superfluid behavior would persist in small systems. Furthermore, we analyze the far field emission pattern of a polariton condensate in a disorder environment in order to compare directly with experiments. In the second part of this thesis features of polaritons in a two-dimensional quantum spin Hall cavity with time reversal symmetry are discussed. We propose a topological invariant which has a nontrivial value if the quantum spin Hall insulator is topologically nontrivial. Furthermore, we analyze emerging polaritonic edge states, discuss their relation to the underlying electronic structure, and develop an effective edge state model for polaritons.

Les polaritons inter-sous-bandes, observés pour la première fois il y a une quinzaine d’années, sont des quasi-particules dont de nombreuses propriétés restent encore à découvrir. La recherche dans ce domaine se focalise actuellement sur la réalisation de condensats de Bose-Einstein. Une telle découverte pourrait révolutionner l’optoélectronique du moyen infra-rouge jusqu’au THz ouvrant la voie à l’instauration de nouveaux concepts de sources lumineuses,de détecteurs ou de systèmes logiques en couplage fort. Dans cette quête, le choix de la cavité résonnante est critique. Dans ce manuscrit nous proposons d’utiliser des cavités métal-isolant-métal (M-I-M) avec un réseau dispersif sur le métal supérieur. Ce type de cavité,conservant un confinement élevé entre les deux plans métalliques, offre de nombreuses possibilités d’ajustement de la résonance de cavité : via la géométrie de la cavité ( épaisseur de la cavité, période et recouvrement du réseau) ainsi que par le couplage de la lumière avec la cavité (vecteur d’onde incident). Les cavités M-I-M dispersives ouvrent donc un nouveau champ d’exploration des polaritons inter-sous-bande. Dans un premier temps nous avons introduit ces cavités dans le domaine du THz afin d’étudier les phénomènes de relaxation polariton-polariton. Un système expérimental dédié à cette exploration a été conçu pour mesurer la réflectivité des polaritons THz avec une fine résolution en angle. Dans une second temps, des capteurs moyen infrarouge en couplage fort avec une cavité M-I-M dispersive ont été conçus, fabriqués et mesurés dans le but d’explorer la génération de photo-courant à partir de polaritons et d’utiliser le couplage fort pour dissocier l’ énergie de détection de l’énergie d’activation. Cette seconde étude s’inscrit dans l’objectif de pompage électrique des polaritons ISB. Parallèlement à l’étude des polaritons, nous avons également participé au développement de techniques(interféromètre Gires-Tournois et revêtement anti-réflection) pour compresser les impulsions optiques de lasers à cascade quantique THz. / After fifteen years of intersubband polaritons development some of the peculiar properties of these quasi-particles are still unexplored. A deeper comprehension of the polaritons is needed to access their fundamental properties and assess their applicative potential as efficient emitters or detectors in the mid-infrared and THz.In this manuscript we used Metal-Insulator-Metal (MI-M) cavities with a top metal periodic grating as a platform to deepen the understanding of ISB polaritons.The advantages of M-I-M are twofold : first they confine the TM00 mode, second the dispersion of the cavity -over a large set of in-plane wave-vectors- offers various experimental configurations to observe the polaritons in both reflection and photo-current. We reexamined the properties of ISB polaritons in the mid-infrared and in the THz using these resonators. In the first part, we explore the implementation of dispersive M-I-M cavities with THz intersubband transitions. In the THz domain, the scattering mechanisms of the THz ISB polaritons need to be understood. The dispersive cavity is a major asset to study these mechanisms because it provides more degrees of freedom to the system. For this purpose, we fabricated a new experimental set-up to measure the polariton dispersion at liquid Helium temperature. After the characterization of the polaritons in reflectivity, a pump-probe experiment was performed on the polaritonic devices. The second part of this manuscript presents the implementation of M-I-M dispersive cavities with abound-to-quasi-bound quantum well infrared photo detector designed to detect in strong coupling. Beyond electrical probing of the polaritons, the strong coupling can disentangle the frequency of detection from the thermal activation energy and reduce the dark current at a given frequency. In parallel to the exploration of THz polaritons, we developed two techniques (Gires-Tournois Interferometer and Anti-reflection coating) in order to shorten the pulses of THz quantum cascade lasers with metal-metal waveguides.

Práce pojednává o vlastnostech plazmonických antén v infračervené a viditelné oblasti. Práce zahrnuje výrobu, měření a numerické modelování optických vlastností antén. Infračervené plazmonické antény na absorbujícím substrátu (SRON) jsou studovány pro jejich rezonanční a absorpční vlastnosti. Byla nalezena geometrie antény, která poskytuje maximální účinnost absorpce ve SRON vrstvě. Dále je studována možnost zesílení daného vibračního módu substrátu (obsahujícího 3-4 materiálové rezonance) pomocí plazmonické rezonance antény. Nakonec jsou prezentována měření katodoluminiscenčních spekter antén ve viditelném spektru.

No description available.

This thesis explores systems that exhibit strong coupling between an optical cavity field and a many-particle system. To treat the drive and dissipative nature of the cavity on the same footing as the dynamics of the many-particle system, we use a non-equilibrium field theoretic approach. The first system considered is an ultracold bosonic gas trapped inside a cavity. The dispersive coupling between the cavity field and the atoms' motion leads to the formation of a polariton. We show how a modulation of the pump laser on the energy scale of the transverse cavity mode splitting can be used to create effective interactions between different cavity modes. This effective interaction results in the polariton acquiring a multimode nature, exemplified by avoided crossings in the cavity spectrum. As the laser power is increased, the polariton softens and at a critical power becomes unstable. This instability signals the transition into a superradiant state. If the multimode polariton contains a cavity mode with an effective negative detuning, then the transition does not happen through a mode softening but at a finite frequency. To investigate this, classical non-linear equations are constructed from the action and from these we derive the critical couplings and frequencies. It is shown how the superradiant transition happening at a finite frequency is a consequence of a competition between the negatively and the positively detuned cavity modes making up the polariton. The finite-frequency transition is found to be equivalent to a Hopf bifurcation and leads to the emergence of limit cycles. Our analysis shows that the system can exhibit both bistabilities and evolution constricted to a two-torus. We end the investigation by showing how interactions among the atoms combined with the emerging limit cycle open new phonon scattering channels. The second system considered in the thesis is inspired by the recent experiments on gated Transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMD) monolayers inside cavities. An exciton within the TMD can couple strongly to the cavity and, due to the electronic gating, also interact strongly with the conduction electrons. To treat the strong interactions of the excitons with both cavity and electrons, we solve the coupled equations for the correlation functions non-perturbatively within a ladder approximation. The strong interactions give rise to new quasiparticles known as polaron-polaritons. By driving the system through the cavity, we show how the competition between electron-induced momentum relaxation and cavity loss leads to the accumulation of polaritons at a small but finite momentum, which is accompanied by significant decrease of the polariton linewidth Due to the hybrid nature of the polaron-polariton, we show that this behavior can by qualitatively modified by changing the cavity detuning.

Ce travail de thèse présente quelques exemples d'utilisation du rayonnement térahertz pour l'étude de systèmes d'intérêt biologique. Nous avons construit et caractérisé deux dispositifs expérimentaux analogues, chacun conçu de façon à servir à une famille d'applications particulière. Ces dispositifs sont basés sur la génération et la détection des ondes térahertz à l'aides d'antennes photoconductrices pilotées par un laser infrarouge femtoseconde. Un premier dispositif térahertz, dédié à la spectroscopie dans le domaine temporel, permet de caractériser de nombreux systèmes plus ou moins homogènes du point de vue spectroscopique, c'est-à-dire d'obtenir la permittivité complexe du matériau et sa dépendance spectrale. L'étude des nouveaux matériaux transparents en térahertz et des solutions ioniques aqueuses à l'aide de ce spectromètre térahertz a été accomplie. Un deuxième dispositif est consacré au développement de nouvelles techniques d'imagerie térahertz en champ proche avec ouverture. En effet, un contraste fourni par la différence d'absorption des solutions ioniques a permis d'étudier des cellules biologiques de façon non-invasive ; il s'agit ici notamment de l'embryon de drosophile et du nerf sciatique de grenouille. Le lien entre ces deux thématiques est fait par la recherche sur les plasmons-polaritons de surfaces, des ondes électromagnétiques à la surface de métaux, qui, dans certaines conditions, permettent d'exalter la transmission à travers des ouvertures de taille inférieure à la longueur d'onde. Des études spectroscopiques ont permis de comprendre certaines propriétés fondamentales de ces ondes surfaciques en vue de leur application aux nouvelles sondes de champ proche.

We introduce an approach to implement full coherent control on nanometer length scales. It is based on spatiotemporal modulation of the surface plasmon polariton (SPP) fields at the thick edge of a nanowedge. The SPP wavepackets propagating toward the sharp edge of this nanowedge are compressed and adiabatically concentrated at a nanofocus, forming an ultrashort pulse of local fields. The profile of the focused waveform as a function of time and one spatial dimension is completely coherently controlled. We establish the principal limits for the nanoconcentration of the terahertz (THz) radiation in metal/dielectric waveguides and determine their optimum shapes required for this nanoconcentration. We predict that the adiabatic compression of THz radiation from the initial spot size of vacuum wavelength R λ 300 μm 0 0 ≈ ≈ to the unprecedented final size of R = 100 − 250 nm can be achieved, while the THz radiation intensity is increased by a factor of 10 to 250. This THz energy nanoconcentration will not only improve the spatial resolution and increase the signal/noise ratio for THz imaging and spectroscopy, but in combination with the recently developed sources of powerful THz pulses, will allow the observation of nonlinear THz effects and a variety of nonlinear spectroscopies (such as two-dimensional spectroscopy), which are highly informative. This should find a wide spectrum of applications in science, engineering, biomedical research and environmental monitoring. We also develop a theory of the spoof plasmons propagating at the interface between a dielectric and a real conductor. The deviation from a perfect conductor is introduced through a finite skin depth. The possibilities of guiding and focusing of spoof plasmons are considered. Geometrical parameters of the structure are found which provide a good guiding of such modes. Moreover, the limit on the concentration by means of planar spoof plasmons in case of non-ideal metal is established. These properties of spoof plasmons are of great interest for THz technology.