Related papers: Efficient light harvesting and photon sensing via …
Photosynthesis is a biological process that involves the highly-efficient transport of energy captured from the sun to a reaction center, where conversion into useful biochemical energy takes place. Even though one can always use a quantum…
Broadband absorption in the visible spectrum is essential in optoelectronic applications that involve power conversion such as photovoltaics and photocatalysis. Most ultrathin broadband absorbers use parasitic plasmonic structures that…
Efficient transport and harvesting of excitation energy under low light conditions is an important process in nature and quantum technologies alike. Here we formulate a quantum optics perspective to excitation energy transport in…
Photosynthetic complexes improve the transfer of excitation energy from peripheral antennas to reaction centers in several ways. In particular, a downward energy funnel can direct excitons in the right direction, while coherent excitonic…
We describe surface patterning strategies that permit high photon-collection efficiency together with high carrier-collection efficiency in an ultra-thin planar heterojunction organic photovoltaic cell. Optimized designs reach up to 50%…
Photosynthesis is the basic process used by plants to convert light energy in reaction centers into chemical energy. The high efficiency of this process is not yet understood today. Using the formalism for the description of open quantum…
While detection of optical photons is today achieved with very high efficiencies, the detection of microwave fields at the photon level still poses non-trivial experimental challenges. In this Letter we propose a model of microwave…
All optical detectors to date annihilate photons upon detection, thus excluding repeated measurements. Here, we demonstrate a robust photon detection scheme which does not rely on absorption. Instead, an incoming photon is reflected off an…
We establish design principles for light-harvesting antennae whose energy capture scales superlinearly with system size. Controlling the absorber dipole orientations produces sets of `guide-slide' states which promote steady-state…
The coherence of light has been proposed as a quantum-mechanical control for enhancing light-harvesting efficiency. In particular, optical coherence can be manipulated by changing either the polarization state or spectral phase of the…
The interaction of light with photosynthetic proteins is an extremely efficient process and has been thoroughly investigated. However, exploring light-matter interactions in hybrid nano-solid-photosynthetic proteins is a relatively new and…
Ultrafast, high quantum efficiency single photon detectors are among the most sought-after elements in modern quantum optics and quantum communication. High photon detection efficiency is essential for scalable measurement-based quantum…
The realization of a high-efficiency microwave single photon detector is a long-standing problem in the field of microwave quantum optics. Here we propose a quantum non-demolition, high-efficiency photon detector that can readily be…
The rate at which matter emits or absorbs light can be modified by its environment, as dramatically exemplified by the widely-studied phenomenon of superradiance. The reverse process, superabsorption, is harder to demonstrate due to the…
With the increasing number of IoT devices, there is a growing demand for energy-free sensors. Human activity recognition holds immense value in numerous daily healthcare applications. However, the majority of current sensing modalities…
Light-harvesting via the transport and trapping of optically-induced electronic excitations is of fundamental interest to the design of new energy efficient quantum technologies. Using a paradigmatic quantum optical model, we study the…
Natural photosynthetic photonic nanostructures can show sophisticated light matter-interactions including enhanced light absorption by slow light even for highly pigmented systems. Beyond fundamental biology aspects these natural…
We revisit the calculation of bosonic dark matter absorption via electronic excitations. Working in an effective field theory framework and consistently taking into account in-medium effects, we clarify the relation between dark matter and…
Recent ultrafast optical experiments show that excitons in large biological light-harvesting complexes are coupled to molecular vibration modes. These high-frequency vibrations will not only affect the optical response, but also drive the…
The recently suggested possibility that weak vibronic transitions can be excitonically enhanced in light-harvesting complexes is studied in detail. A vibronic exciton dimer model which includes ground state vibrations is investigated using…