Phys.org October 2, 2024
A team of researchers in the US (Argonne National Laboratory, University of Chicago) has developed a predictive and general approach to investigate near-field energy transfer processes between localized defects in semiconductors, which couples first-principles electronic structure calculations and a nonrelativistic quantum electrodynamics description of photons in the weak-coupling regime which could be applied to investigate broad classes of defects in solids. They applied their approach to investigate a point defect in an oxide, the F center in MgO, and showed that the energy transfer from a magnetic source to the vacancy could lead to spin nonconserving long-lived excitations that were dominant processes in the near field, at distances relevant to the design of photonic devices and ultrahigh dense memories. They defined a descriptor for coherent energy transfer to predict geometrical configurations of emitters to enable long-lived excitations, that are useful to design optical memories in semiconductor and insulators… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
(a) Two possible paths for the energy transfer from S to A, with respective Feynman diagrams shown in (b) and (c). Credit: Phys. Rev. Research 6, 033170, 14 August 2024