Subcycle lightwave electronics

Boosting clock rates

The clock rates of conventional CMOS electronics have long reached fundamental limits set by thermal heating of rapidly scattering electrons. Lightwave electronics may overcome this barrier with a radically new strategy: Using the oscillating carrier field of light as a transient bias, one can manipulate charge carriers faster than a single cycle of light. On subcycle time scales, electrons can move ballistically without scattering, even in solids, which may allow future low-loss electronics to operate at optical clock rates.

THz and PHz electronics

Our group has pioneered how intense phase-locked infrared pulses accelerate charge carriers in solids faster than a cycle of light, undergo dynamical Bloch oscillations, generate phase-locked high-order harmonic radiation, realize quasiparticle accelerators, sculpt topologically non-trivial quantum trajectories, and switch the spin and valley pseudospin of electrons in record time. Furthermore, we clocked lightwave-driven recollision events between electrons and holes with attosecond precision to gauge many-body interactions.

Open projects

Electronics at optical clock rates
Atomically strong light fields can accelerate electrons in solids so rapidly that they have no time to scatter. This approach unleashes a fascinating all-coherent quantum world full of promise for future ultrafast electronic functionalities. We are specifically curious how many-body correlations emerge from fully coherent subcycle dynamics and how these ideas may be exploited to tailor first lightwave electronic functionalities.

Chiral lightwave electronics
Chemistry and biology already use it everywhere: chirality. Molecules that exhibit handedness show distinct properties, stabilizing physiological processes. We want to expand this concept to faster, more stable and less dissipative electronics of the future. In the new Cluster of Excellence 3112 ‘Center for Chiral Electronics` (external link, opens in a new window), we will investigate chiral solids and their suitability to host chiral lightwave electronics.

Shaping and controlling new phases of matter with lightwaves
With Floquet-Bloch band-structure engineering, we can shape new phases of matter, on demand. We are interested in a broad variety of novel phases with tailored topology and chirality. Bose-Einstein condensates in spin-ordered crystals will be investigated to see whether spintronic concepts can be crossed over with a macroscopic quantum mechanical wave function for future quantum information functionalities.

Interested in joining us? Please send an email to Rupert Huber or Ulla Franzke.

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