Giovanni Viola

Hall Effect Gyrators and Circulators

The electronic circulator and its close relative the gyrator are invaluable tools for noise management and signal routing in the current generation of low-temperature microwave systems for the implementation of new quantum technologies. The current implementation of these devices using the Faraday effect is satisfactory but requires a bulky structure whose physical dimension is close to the microwave wavelength employed. The Hall effect is an alternative nonreciprocal effect that can also be used to produce desired device functionality. We review earlier efforts to use an Ohmically contacted four-terminal Hall bar, explaining why this approach leads to unacceptably high device loss. We find that capacitive coupling to such a Hall conductor has much greater promise for achieving good circulator and gyrator functionality. We formulate a classical Ohm-Hall analysis for calculating the properties of such a device, and show how this classical theory simplifies remarkably in the limiting case of the Hall angle approaching 90°. In this limit, we find that either a four-terminal or a three-terminal capacitive device can give excellent circulator behavior, with device dimensions far smaller than the ac wavelength. An experiment is proposed to achieve GHz-band gyration in millimeter (and smaller) scale structures employing either semiconductor heterostructure or graphene Hall conductors. An inductively coupled scheme for realizing a Hall gyrator is also analyzed.

High-sensitivity plasmonic refractive index sensing using graphene

We theoretically demonstrate a high-sensitivity graphene-plasmon-based refractive index sensor working in the mid-infrared at room temperature. The bulk figure of merit of our sensor reaches values above 10, but the key aspect of our proposed plasmonic sensor is its surface sensitivity, which we examine in detail. We have used realistic values regarding doping level and electron relaxation time, which is the limiting factor for the sensor performance. Our results show quantitatively the high performance of graphene-plasmon-based refractive index sensors working in the mid-infrared.

Optical signatures of nonlocal plasmons in graphene

We theoretically investigate under which conditions nonlocal plasmon response in monolayer graphene can be detected. To this purpose, we study optical scattering off graphene plasmon resonances coupled using a subwavelength dielectric grating. We compute the graphene conductivity using the random phase approximation (RPA) obtaining a nonlocal conductivity, and we calculate the optical scattering of the graphene-grating structure. We then compare this with the scattering amplitudes obtained if graphene is modeled by the local RPA conductivity commonly used in the literature. We find that the graphene plasmon wavelength calculated from the local model may deviate up to 20% from the more accurate nonlocal model in the small-wavelength (large-q) regime. We also find substantial differences in the scattering amplitudes obtained from the two models. However, these differences in response are pronounced only for small grating periods and low temperatures compared to the Fermi temperature.

Collective modes in the fluxonium qubit

Superconducting qubit designs vary in complexity from single- and few-junction systems, such as the transmon and flux qubits, to the many-junction fluxonium. Here, we consider the question of whether the many degrees of freedom in the fluxonium circuit can limit the qubit coherence time. Such a limitation is in principle possible, due to the interactions between the low-energy, highly anharmonic qubit mode and the higher-energy, weakly anharmonic collective modes. We show that so long as the coupling of the collective modes with the external electromagnetic environment is sufficiently weaker than the qubit-environment coupling, the qubit dephasing induced by the collective modes does not significantly contribute to decoherence. Therefore, the increased complexity of the fluxonium qubit does not constitute by itself a major obstacle for its use in quantum computation architectures.

Current-controlled light scattering and asymmetric plasmon propagation in graphene

We demonstrate that plasmons in graphene can be manipulated using a dc current. A source-drain current lifts the forward/backward degeneracy of the plasmons, creating two modes with different propagation properties parallel and antiparallel to the current. We show that the propagation length of the plasmon propagating parallel to the drift current is enhanced, while the propagation length for the antiparallel plasmon is suppressed. We also investigate the scattering of light off graphene due to the plasmons in a periodic dielectric environment and we find that the plasmon resonance separates in two peaks corresponding to the forward and backward plasmon modes. The narrower linewidth of the forward propagating plasmon may be of interest for refractive index sensing and the dc current control could be used for the modulation of mid-infrared electromagnetic radiation.

Graphene plasmons: Impurities and nonlocal effects

This work analyses how impurities and vacancies on the surface of a graphene sample affect its optical conductivity and plasmon excitations. The disorder is analysed in the self-consistent Greens function formulation and nonlocal effects are fully taken into account. It is shown that impurities modify the linear spectrum and give rise to an impurity band whose position and width depend on the two parameters of our model, the density and the strength of impurities. The presence of the impurity band strongly influences the electromagnetic response and the plasmon losses. Furthermore, we discuss how the impurity-band position can be obtained experimentally from the plasmon dispersion relation and discuss this in the context of sensing.