Motional narrowing, ballistic transport, and trapping of room-temperature exciton polaritons in an atomically-thin semiconductor

Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide crystals (TMDCs) hold great promise for semiconductor optoelectronics because their bound electron-hole pairs (excitons) are stable at room temperature and interact strongly with light. When TMDCs are embedded in an optical microcavity, excitons can hybridise with cavity photons to form exciton polaritons, which inherit useful properties from their constituents. The ability to manipulate and trap polaritons on a microchip is critical for applications. Here, we create a non-trivial potential landscape for polaritons in monolayer WS2, and demonstrate their trapping and ballistic propagation across tens of micrometers. We show that the effects of dielectric disorder, which restrict the diffusion of WS2 excitons and broaden their spectral resonance, are dramatically reduced for polaritons, leading to motional narrowing and preserved partial coherence. Linewidth narrowing and coherence are further enhanced in the trap. Our results demonstrate the possibility of long-range dissipationless transport and efficient trapping of TMDC polaritons in ambient conditions.

Protein dynamics insights from ¹⁵N-¹H (TROSY) HSQC

Protein dynamic information is customarily extracted from 15N NMR spin-relaxation experiments. These experiments can only be applied to (small) proteins that can be dissolved to high concentrations. However, most proteins of interest to the biochemical and biomedical community are large and relatively insoluble. These proteins often have functional conformational changes, and it is particularly regretful that these processes cannot be supplemented by dynamical information from NMR. We ask here whether (some) dynamic information can be obtained form the 1H line widths in 15N-1H HSQC spectra. Such spectra are widely available, also for larger proteins. We developed a computer program to predict amide proton line widths from (crystal) structures. As a calibration, we test our approach on BPTI. We find that we can predict most of the distribution of experimental amide proton line widths if we take the dipole-dipole interaction with at least 40 surrounding protons into account. When focusing our attention the outliers of the distribution, we find for BPTI a cluster of conformationally broadened 1HN resonances of residues in strands 10–15 and 36–40 of the beta sheet. Conformational exchange broadening of the 15NH resonances for these residues was previously reported using 15N relaxation measurements (Szyperski et al., J. Biomol. NMR 3, 151–164, 1993). There is little or no evidence for motional narrowing of the 1HN resonances, also in agreement with earlier data using 15N relaxation methods (Beeser et.al, J. Mol. Biol. 269, 154–164, 1997). We also apply our program to 42 kDa domain of the human Hsc70 protein. In this case, there is no previous 15N relaxation data to compare with, but we find, again from the outliers of the distribution, both exchange broadening and motional narrowing that appears to corroborate previous conformational insights for this domain.

Nonlinear polaritons in a monolayer semiconductor coupled to optical bound states in the continuum

Optical bound states in the continuum (BICs) provide a way to engineer very narrow resonances in photonic crystals. The extended interaction time in these systems is particularly promising for the enhancement of nonlinear optical processes and the development of the next generation of active optical devices. However, the achievable interaction strength is limited by the purely photonic character of optical BICs. Here, we mix the optical BIC in a photonic crystal slab with excitons in the atomically thin semiconductor MoSe2 to form nonlinear exciton-polaritons with a Rabi splitting of 27 meV, exhibiting large interaction-induced spectral blueshifts. The asymptotic BIC-like suppression of polariton radiation into the far field toward the BIC wavevector, in combination with effective reduction of the excitonic disorder through motional narrowing, results in small polariton linewidths below 3 meV. Together with a strongly wavevector-dependent Q-factor, this provides for the enhancement and control of polariton–polariton interactions and the resulting nonlinear optical effects, paving the way toward tuneable BIC-based polaritonic devices for sensing, lasing, and nonlinear optics.

Sum frequency generation, calculation of absolute intensities, comparison with experiments, and two-field relaxation-based derivation

The experimental sum frequency generation (SFG) spectrum is the response to an infrared pulse and a visible pulse and is a highly surface-sensitive technique. We treat the surface dangling OH bonds at the air/water interface and focus on the absolute SFG intensities for the resonant terms, a focus that permits insight into the consequences of some approximations. For the polarization combinations, the calculated linewidths for the water interface dangling OH SFG band at 3,700 cm−1 are, as usual, too large, because of the customary neglect of motional narrowing. The integrated spectrum is used to circumvent this problem and justified here using a Kubo-like formalism and theoretical integrated band intensities rather than peak intensities. Only relative SFG intensities are usually reported. The absolute integrated SFG intensities for three polarization combinations for sum frequency, visible, and infrared beams are computed. We use molecular dynamics and the dipole and the polarizability matrix elements obtained from infrared and Raman studies of H2O vapor. The theoretical expressions for two of the absolute susceptibilities contain only a single term and agree with experiment to about a factor of 1.3, with no adjustable parameters. The Fresnel factors are included in that comparison. One of the susceptibilities contains instead four positive and negative terms and agrees less well. The expression for the SFG correlation function is normally derived from a statistical mechanical formulation using a time-evolving density matrix. We show how a derivation based on a two-field relaxation leads to the same final result.

Temperature-Dependent Evolution of Raman Spectra of Methylammonium Lead Halide Perovskites, CH3NH3PbX3 (X = I, Br)

We present a Raman study on the phase transitions of organic/inorganic hybrid perovskite materials, CH3NH3PbX3 (X = I, Br), which are used as solar cells with high power conversion efficiency. The temperature dependence of the Raman bands of CH3NH3PbX3 (X = I, Br) was measured in the temperature ranges of 290 to 100 K for CH3NH3PbBr3 and 340 to 110 K for CH3NH3PbI3. Broad ν1 bands at ~326 cm−1 for MAPbBr3 and at ~240 cm−1 for MAPbI3 were assigned to the MA–PbX3 cage vibrations. These bands exhibited anomalous temperature dependence, which was attributable to motional narrowing originating from fast changes between the orientational states of CH3NH3+ in the cage. Phase transitions were characterized by changes in the bandwidths and peak positions of the MA–cage vibration and some bands associated with the NH3+ group.

Na3GaF6 – A crystal chemical and solid state NMR spectroscopic study

Na3GaF6 and Na3GaF6:Mn4+ samples were obtained from NaNO3 and Ga(NO3)3·9H2O in hydrofluoric acid using K2MnF6 or NaMnO4 as manganese sources. The structure of Na3GaF6 was studied by single crystal X-ray diffraction at 90, 293, 440 and 500 K, confirming the monoclinic cryolite type structure, space group P21/c. The gallium atoms show slightly distorted octahedral coordination by fluorine atoms, similar to the Na1 atoms. Coordination number 8 is observed for Na2. Both sodium sites are clearly distinguished by 23Na MAS-NMR spectroscopy. Above 400 K the spectra reveal distinct chemical exchange effects, signifying sodium ion hopping between these two sites. At the same time static 19F NMR spectra indicate pronounced motional narrowing effects in this temperature region. The nearly invariant 69Ga MAS-NMR spectra suggest that any reorientational motion involving the GaF63− ions (if present) occurs with preservation of the center of mass of these octahedra.