Applied Physics Seminar

In recent years there has been significant interest in utilizing solid-state defects as atomic-like systems for quantum-enabled applications.  For photonic applications, interest has been predominantly in tightly confined electronic systems, such as the nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond and rare-earth doped crystals. In this talk, I will instead focus on defects that form effective-mass potentials for semiconductor carriers. For these defects, the optical and spin properties are derived from a combination of the bulk semiconductor and effective mass potential properties, and can often be derived analytically (i.e. without the need of ab initio numerical calculations).  The first half of my talk I will present measurements on the longitudinal spin relaxation time of electrons bound to the 0D potential provided by shallow donors in GaAs, InP, CdTe, and ZnO. In all 4 materials, millisecond relaxation times are observed with the relaxation mechanisms relatively well understood. In the second half of my talk I will show how atomically thin defect planes in GaAs can be utilized as single and double 2D potentials for interacting excitonic gases.

More about the speaker: Kai-Mei Fu received her A.B. in Physics from Princeton University in 2000 and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University in 2003 and 2007, respectively. She worked as a research associate at HP Labs, Palo Alto from 2007-2011 before joining the faculty at the University of Washington with a joint position in Physics and Electrical Engineering. Her research focuses on understanding and engineering the quantum properties of point defects in crystals for quantum information and sensing applications. She is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the Cottrell Scholar Award, and the UW College of Engineering Junior Faculty Award.