David Snoke

 

Associate Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy

G10 Allen Hall 
412-624-9007, 9163(fax) 
snoke@pitt.edu

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/people/fprofile.php?id=183

 

 

David Snoke’s research group has worked closely with the Loren Pfeiffer and coworkers at Bell Labs to design new structures in which optical excitations known as excitons (electron-hole pairs) and polaritons (mixed states of excitons and photons) can be trapped in localized spots or caused to move from one place to another over distances of hundreds of microns in a semiconductor chip. The structures involve quantum wells and microcavities with lasers a few nanometers thick, with control of the thickness to with a single atom, in order to have motion of the optical excitations with minimal scattering. This type of control can lead to new types of photonic circuits and to new types of lasers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Left, upper image: a harmonic potential trap for excitons created in a double quantum well structure. lower image: drift of excitons from the point of creation down to the bottom of the trap. Right: Drift of polaritons in a microcavity into a potential minimum. Gray: reflectivity spectrum, showing the potential energy landscape of the polaritons. Color: false-color