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The development of nanoscale nonlinear elements in photonic integrated circuits is hindered by the physical limits to the nonlinear optical response of dielectrics, which requires that the interacting waves propagate in transparent volumes for distances much longer than their wavelength. Here we present experimental evidence that optical nonlinearities in doped semiconductors are due to free-electron and their efficiency could exceed by several orders of magnitude that of conventional dielectric nonlinearities. Our experimental findings are supported by comprehensive computational results based on the hydrodynamic modeling, which naturally includes nonlocal effects, of the free-electron dynamics in heavily doped semiconductors. By studying third-harmonic generation from plasmonic nanoantenna arrays made out of heavily n-doped InGaAs with increasing levels of free-carrier density, we discriminate between hydrodynamic and dielectric nonlinearities. As a result, the value of maximum nonlinear efficiency as well as its spectral location can now be controlled by tuning the doping level. Having employed the common material platform InGaAs/InP that supports integrated waveguides, our findings pave the way for future exploitation of plasmonic nonlinearities in all-semiconductor photonic integrated circuits.

Few-layer graphene possesses low-energy carriers which behave as massive fermions, exhibiting intriguing properties in both transport and light scattering experiments. Lowering the excitation energy of resonance Raman spectroscopy down to 1.17 eV we target these massive quasiparticles in the split bands close to the K point. The low excitation energy weakens some of the Raman processes which are resonant in the visible, and induces a clearer frequency-separation of the sub-structures of the resonance 2D peak in bi- and trilayer samples. We follow the excitation-energy dependence of the intensity of each sub-structure and, comparing experimental measurements on bilayer graphene with ab initio theoretical calculations, we trace back such modifications on the joint effects of probing the electronic dispersion close to the band splitting and enhancement of electron-phonon matrix elements., Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures

We report on resonance Raman spectroscopy measurements with excitation photon energy down to 1.16 eV on graphene, to study how low-energy carriers interact with lattice vibrations. Thanks to the excitation energy close to the Dirac point at $\mathbf{K}$, we unveil a giant increase of the intensity ratio between the double-resonant 2D and 2D$^\prime$ peaks with respect to that measured in graphite. Comparing with fully \textit{ab initio} theoretical calculations, we conclude that the observation is explained by an enhanced, momentum-dependent coupling between electrons and Brillouin zone-boundary optical phonons. This finding applies to two dimensional Dirac systems and has important consequences for the modeling of transport in graphene devices operating at room temperature., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

Resonance Raman scattering, which probes electrons, phonons and their interplay in crystals, is extensively used in two-dimensional materials. Here we investigate Raman modes in MoSe$_2$ at different laser excitation energies from 2.33 eV down to the near infrared 1.16 eV. The Raman spectrum at 1.16 eV excitation energy shows that the intensity of high-order modes is strongly enhanced if compared to the first-order phonon modes intensity due to resonance effects with the MoSe$_2$ indirect band gap. By comparing the experimental results with the two-phonon density of states calculated with density functional theory, we show that the high-order modes originate mostly from two-phonon modes with opposite momenta. In particular, we identify the momenta of the phonon modes that couple strongly with the electrons to produce the resonance process at 1.16 eV, while we verify that at 2.33 eV the two-phonon modes lineshape compares well with the two-phonon density of state calculated over the entire Brillouin Zone. We also show that, by lowering the crystal temperature, we actively suppress the intensity of the resonant two-phonon modes and we interpret this as the result of the increase of the indirect band gap at low temperature that moves our excitation energy out of the resonance condition., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, to be published in Physical Review B

A promising route for the development of opto-elelctronic technology is to use terahertz radiation to modulate the optical properties of semiconductors. Here we demonstrate the dynamical control of photoluminescence (PL) emission in few-layer InSe using picosecond terahertz pulses. We observe a strong PL quenching (up to 50%) after the arrival of the terahertz pulse followed by a reversible recovery of the emission on the time scale of 50ps at T =10K. Microscopic calculations reveal that the origin of the photoluminescence quenching is the terahertz absorption by photo-excited carriers: this leads to a heating of the carriers and a broadening of their distribution, which reduces the probability of bimolecular electron-hole recombination and, therefore, the luminescence. By numerically evaluating the Boltzmann equation, we are able to clarify the individual roles of optical and acoustic phonons in the subsequent cooling process. The same PL quenchingmechanismis expected in other van derWaals semiconductors and the effectwill be particularly strong for materials with low carrier masses and long carrier relaxation time, which is the case for InSe. This work gives a solid background for the development of opto-electronic applications based on InSe, such as THz detectors and optical modulators., Comment: The following article has been accepted by Applied Physics Letters. After it is published, it will be found at https://publishing.aip.org/resources/librarians/products/journals/

We study the optical properties of thin flakes of InSe encapsulated in hBN. More specifically, we investigate the photoluminescence (PL) emission and its dependence on sample thickness and temperature. Through the analysis of the PL lineshape, we discuss the relative weights of the exciton and electron-hole contributions. Thereafter we investigate the PL dynamics. Two contributions are distinguishable at low temperature: direct bandgap electron-hole and defect-assisted recombination. The two recombination processes have lifetime of $\tau_1 \sim 8\;$ns and $\tau_2 \sim 100\;$ns, respectively. The relative weights of the direct bandgap and defect-assisted contributions show a strong layer dependence due to the direct-to-indirect bandgap crossover. Electron-hole PL lifetime is limited by population transfer to lower-energy states and no dependence on the number of layers was observed. The lifetime of the defect-assisted recombination gets longer for thinner samples. Finally, we show that the PL lifetime decreases at high temperatures as a consequence of more efficient non-radiative recombinations., Comment: The manuscript will be published in the journal Physical Review Materials. Copyright 2011 by American Physical Society (https://journals.aps.org/prmaterials/)