Search

We demonstrate rapid imaging based on four-wave mixing (FWM) by assessing the quality of advanced materials through measurement of their nonlinear response, exciton dephasing, and exciton lifetimes. We use a WSe$_2$ monolayer grown by chemical vapor deposition as a canonical example to demonstrate these capabilities. By comparison, we show that extracting material parameters such as FWM intensity, dephasing times, excited state lifetimes, and distribution of dark/localized states allows for a more accurate assessment of the quality of a sample than current prevalent techniques, including white light microscopy and linear micro-reflectance spectroscopy. We further discuss future improvements of the ultrafast FWM techniques by modeling the robustness of exponential decay fits to different spacing of the sampling points. Employing ultrafast nonlinear imaging in real-time at room temperature bears the potential for rapid in-situ sample characterization of advanced materials and beyond.

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are regarded as a possible materials platform for quantum information science and related device applications. In TMD monolayers, the dephasing time and inhomogeneity are crucial parameters for any quantum information application. In TMD heterostructures, coupling strength and interlayer exciton lifetimes are also parameters of interest. However, many demonstrations in TMDs can only be realized at specific spots on the sample, presenting a challenge to the scalability of these applications. Here, using multi-dimensional coherent imaging spectroscopy (MDCIS), we shed light on the underlying physics - including dephasing, inhomogeneity, and strain - for a MoSe$_2$ monolayer and identify both promising and unfavorable areas for quantum information applications. We furthermore apply the same technique to a MoSe$_2$/WSe$_2$ heterostructure. Despite the notable presence of strain and dielectric environment changes, coherent and incoherent coupling, as well as interlayer exciton lifetimes are mostly robust across the sample. This uniformity is despite a significantly inhomogeneous interlayer exciton photoluminescence distribution that suggests a bad sample for device applications. This robustness strengthens the case for TMDs as a next-generation materials platform in quantum information science and beyond.

The basic \emph{entanglement swapping protocol} allows to project two qubits, which have never interacted, onto a maximally entangled state. For deterministic swapping, the key ingredient is the maximal entanglement that was initially contained in two pairs of qubits and the capacity of projecting onto a Bell basis. Thus the basic and deterministic entanglement swapping scheme involves three maximal level of entanglement. In this work we propose probabilistic entanglement swapping processes performed with different amounts of initial entanglement. Besides that we suggest a non Bell measuring-basis, to introduce a third entanglement level in the process. Additionally, we propose the \emph{unambiguous state extraction scheme} as the local mechanism for probabilistically achieving the EPR projection. The combination of these three elements allows us to design four strategies for performing probabilistic entanglement swapping. Surprisingly, we find a twofold entanglement threshold effect related to the concurrence of the measuring-basis. Specifically, the maximal probability of accomplishing a EPR projection becomes a constant for concurrences higher than or equal to threshold entanglement value. Thus, we show that maximal entanglement in the measuring-basis is not required for attaining the EPR projection., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures

Coherent coupling between excitons is at the heart of many-body interactions with transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) heterostructures as an emergent platform for the investigation of these interactions. We employ multi-dimensional coherent spectroscopy on monolayer MoSe\textsubscript{2}/WSe\textsubscript{2} heterostructures and observe coherent coupling between excitons spatially localized in monolayer MoSe$_2$ and WSe$_2$. Through many-body spectroscopy, we further observe the absorption state arising from free interlayer electron-hole pairs. This observation yields a spectroscopic measurement of the interlayer exciton binding energy of about 250 meV.