A high-efficiency programmable modulator for extreme ultraviolet light with nm feature size based on an electronic phase transition
Abstract
The absence of efficient light modulators for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and X-ray photons significantly limits their real-life application, particularly when even slight complexity of the beam patterns is required. Here we report on a novel approach to reversible imprinting of a holographic mask in an electronic Wigner crystal material with a sub-90 nm feature size. The structure is imprinted on a sub-picosecond time-scale using EUV laser pulses and acts as a high-efficiency diffraction grating that deflects EUV or soft X-ray light. The imprinted nanostructure is stable after the removal of the exciting beams at low temperatures but can be easily erased by a single heating beam. Modeling shows that the efficiency of the device can exceed 1%, approaching state-of-the-art etched gratings, but with the benefit of being programmable and tunable over a large range of wavelengths. The observed effect is based on the rapid change of lattice constant upon transition between metastable electronically-ordered phases in a layered transition metal dichalcogenide. The proposed approach is potentially useful for creating tunable light modulators in the EUV and soft X-ray spectral ranges.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2311.08809,
title = {A high-efficiency programmable modulator for extreme ultraviolet light with nm feature size based on an electronic phase transition},
author = {Igor Vaskivskyi and Anze Mraz and Rok Venturini and Gregor Jecl and Yevhenii Vaskivskyi and Riccardo Mincigrucci and Laura Foglia and Dario De Angelis and Jacopo-Stefano Pelli-Cresi and Ettore Paltanin and Danny Fainozzi and Filippo Bencivenga and Claudio Masciovecchio and Dragan Mihailovic},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.08809},
year = {2024}
}