Quantum confined Rydberg excitons in Cu2O nanoparticles

The quantum confinement of Rydberg excitons is an important step towards exploiting their large nonlinearities for quantum applications. We observe Rydberg excitons in natural nanoparticles of Cu2O. We resolve up to the principal quantum number n=12 in a bulk Cu2O crystal and up to n=6 in nanoparticles extracted from the same crystal. The exciton transitions in nanoparticles are broadened and their oscillator strengths decrease as ∝n−4 compared to those in the bulk (decreasing as ∝n−3). We explain our results by including the effect of quantum confinement of exciton states in the nanoparticles. Our results provide an understanding of the physics of Cu2O Rydberg excitons in confined dimensions.

Citation

Orfanakis , K , Rajendran , S K , Ohadi , H , Zielińska-Raczyńska , S , Czajkowski , G , Karpiński , K & Ziemkiewicz , D 2021 , ' Quantum confined Rydberg excitons in Cu 2 O nanoparticles ' , Physical Review. B, Condensed matter and materials physics , vol. 103 , no. 24 , 245426 . https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.103.245426

Publication

Physical Review. B, Condensed matter and materials physics

Status

Peer reviewed

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.103.245426

ISSN

1098-0121

Type

Journal article

Rights

Copyright © 2021 American Physical Society. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the final published version of the work, which was originally published at https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.103.245426.

Description

Funding: UK EPSRC Grant No. EP/S014403/1 and The Royal Society RGS\R2\192174. K.O. acknowledges EPSRC for PhD studentship support through grant no. EP/L015110/1. S.K.R. acknowledges the Carnegie Trust for the Research Incentive Grant RIG009823.

Collections

University of St Andrews Research

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10023/23577