Rydberg Excitons in Synthetic Cuprous Oxide (Cu${}_2$O)

Abstract

High-lying Rydberg states of Mott-Wannier excitons are receiving considerable interest due to the possibility of adding long-range interactions to the physics of exciton-polaritons. Here, we study Rydberg excitation in bulk synthetic cuprous oxide grown by the optical float zone technique and compare the result with natural samples. X-ray characterization confirms both materials are mostly single crystal, and mid-infrared transmission spectroscopy revealed little difference between synthetic and natural material. The synthetic samples show principal quantum numbers up to $n=10$, exhibit additional absorption lines, plus enhanced spatial broadening and spatial inhomogeneity. Room temperature and cryogenic photoluminescence measurements reveal a significant excess of copper vacancies in the synthetic material. These measurements provide a route towards achieving \mbox{high-$n$} excitons in synthetic crystals, opening a route to scalable quantum devices.

10 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Materials

References in corpus (8)

• Many-Body Physics with Individually-Controlled Rydberg Atoms
• Cooperative atom-light interaction in a blockaded Rydberg ensemble
• Giant Rydberg Excitons in Cuprous Oxide
• Assessment of Rydberg Atoms for Wideband Electric Field Sensing
• Observation of high angular momentum excitons in cuprous oxide
• Vacancy Relaxation in Cuprous Oxide (Cu${}_{2-x}$O${}_{1-y}$)
• Electromagnetically induced transparency with Cu${}_2$O excitons in the presence of phonon coupling
• Nonlinear Optical Properties and Self-Kerr Effect of Rydberg Excitons in Cu${}_2$O

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Microwave-optical coupling via Rydberg excitons in cuprous oxide
• Nonlinear Rydberg exciton-polaritons in Cu${}_2$O microcavities
• High resolution nanosecond spectroscopy of even-parity Rydberg excitons in Cu${}_2$O
• Nonclassical Light from Exciton Interactions in a Two-Dimensional Quantum Mirror
• Energy states of Rydberg excitons in finite crystals: From weak to strong confinement
• Nonlinear optical properties and Kerr nonlinearity of Rydberg excitons in Cu${}_2$O quantum wells
• Many-Body Entanglement in Solid-State Emitters