Electron dynamics in graphene and light-field-driven logic – published in Nature
For several years now, we have understood ultrafast coherent electron dynamics in graphene very well. Now we have looked at how ultrafast coherent electron dynamics behaves at graphene-gold junctions. We were able to work out how virtual and real carrier excitations affect currents, and how the respective contributions depend on the phase of the driving light field — all this in yet another wonderful collaboration of experiment (at our place) and theory which came from Professor Ignacio Franco’s group at Rochester. Based on these insights, we have devised a potentially light-fast logic gate and also demonstrated it experimentally right away. Here, the logic 0 and 1 are encoded in the phase of two laser pulses; the logic operation lies in the addition of the currents caused by the individual laser pulses. All this has just been published in Nature. Here is the link to the original paper; here is the link to the free accessible version; here is a link to the FAU press release and here is a link to the University of Rochester press release. Furthermore, here is an excellent summary in Optics & Photonics News, as well as a news story in between the soccer titans Barça and Real Madrid.
Recently, a highly interesting commentary on this has also been published by Klaas-Jan Tielrooij in Nature Materials, see here.