Controlling the spontaneous emission rate of quantum wells in rolled-up hyperbolic metamaterials

We experimentally demonstrate the enhancement of the spontaneous emission rate of GaAs quantum wells embedded in rolled-up metamaterials. We fabricate microtubes whose walls consist of alternating Ag and (In)(Al)GaAs layers with incorporated active GaAs quantum-well structures. By variation of the layer thickness ratio of the Ag and (In)(Al)GaAs layers we control the effective permittivity tensor of the metamaterial according to an effective medium approach. Thereby, we can design samples with elliptic or hyperbolic dispersion. Time-resolved low temperature photoluminescence spectroscopy supported by finite-difference time-domain simulations reveal a decrease of the quantum well's spontaneous emission lifetime in our metamaterials as a signature of the crossover from elliptic to hyperbolic dispersion.

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530: Physik

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Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)

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We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Grant No. ME 3600/1 and GrK 1286 and CST, Darmstadt, Germany for support with their MICROWAVE STUDIO software.

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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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To cite this version: K. Marvin Schulz, Hoan Vu, Stephan Schwaiger, Andreas Rottler, Tobias Korn, David Sonnenberg, Tobias Kipp, and Stefan Mendach. Controlling the Spontaneous Emission Rate of Quantum Wells in Rolled-Up Hyperbolic Metamaterials. Physical Review Letters, American Physical Society, 2016, 117 (8), pp. 085503. 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.085503

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PhysRevLett.117.085503.pdf

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Controlling the spontaneous emission rate of quantum wells in rolled-up hyperbolic metamaterials