Vanishing Confinement Regime in Terahertz HgTe Nanocrystals Studied under Extreme Conditions of Temperature and Pressure.

While HgTe nanocrystals (NCs) in the mid-infrared region have reached a high level of maturity, their far-infrared counterparts remain far less studied, raising the need for an in-depth investigation of the material before efficient device integration can be considered. Here, we explore the effect of temperature and pressure on the structural, spectroscopic, and transport properties of HgTe NCs displaying an intraband absorption at 10 THz. The temperature leads to a very weak modulation of the spectrum as opposed to what was observed for strongly confined HgTe NCs.

Dynamic properties of high-T superconducting nano-junctions made with a focused helium ion beam.

The Josephson junction (JJ) is the corner stone of superconducting electronics and quantum information processing. While the technology for fabricating low T JJ is mature and delivers quantum circuits able to reach the "quantum supremacy", the fabrication of reproducible and low-noise high-T JJ is still a challenge to be taken up. Here we report on noise properties at RF frequencies of recently introduced high-T Josephson nano-junctions fabricated by mean of a Helium ion beam focused at sub-nanometer scale on a YBaCuO thin film.

Spin-Orbit induced phase-shift in BiSe Josephson junctions.

The transmission of Cooper pairs between two weakly coupled superconductors produces a superfluid current and a phase difference; the celebrated Josephson effect. Because of time-reversal and parity symmetries, there is no Josephson current without a phase difference between two superconductors. Reciprocally, when those two symmetries are broken, an anomalous supercurrent can exist in the absence of phase bias or, equivalently, an anomalous phase shift φ can exist in the absence of a superfluid current.

Shiba Bound States across the Mobility Edge in Doped InAs Nanowires.

We present a study of Andreev quantum dots fabricated with small-diameter (30 nm) Si-doped InAs nanowires where the Fermi level can be tuned across a mobility edge separating localized states from delocalized states. The transition to the insulating phase is identified by a drop in the amplitude and width of the excited levels and is found to have remarkable consequences on the spectrum of superconducting subgap resonances. While at deeply localized levels only quasiparticle cotunneling is observed, for slightly delocalized levels Shiba bound states form and a parity-changing quantum phase transition is identified by a crossing of the bound states at zero energy.

Strong near field enhancement in THz nano-antenna arrays.

A key issue in modern photonics is the ability to concentrate light into very small volumes, thus enhancing its interaction with quantum objects of sizes much smaller than the wavelength. In the microwave domain, for many years this task has been successfully performed by antennas, built from metals that can be considered almost perfect at these frequencies. Antenna-like concepts have been recently extended into the THz and up to the visible, however metal losses increase and limit their performances.

Extremely sub-wavelength THz metal-dielectric wire microcavities.

We demonstrate minimal volume wire THz metal-dielectric micro-cavities, in which all but one dimension have been reduced to highly sub-wavelength values. The smallest cavity features an effective volume of 0.4 µm(3), which is ~5.