Raffaele Colombelli

We demonstrate that absorption saturation of a mid-infrared intersubband transition can be engineered to occur at moderate light intensities of the order of 10–20 kW cm−2 and at room temperature. The structure consists of an array of metal–semiconductor–metal patches hosting a judiciously designed 253 nm thick GaAs/AlGaAs semiconductor heterostructure. At low incident intensity, the structure operates in the strong light–matter coupling regime and exhibits two absorption peaks at wavelengths close to 8.9 μm. Saturation appears as a transition to the weak coupling regime—and therefore, to a single-peaked absorption—when increasing the incident intensity. Comparison with a coupled mode theory model explains the data and permits to infer the relevant system parameters. When the pump laser is tuned at the cavity frequency, the reflectivity decreases with increasing incident intensity. When instead the laser is tuned at the polariton frequencies, the reflectivity non-linearly increases with increasing incident intensity. At those wavelengths, the system, therefore, mimics the behavior of a saturable absorption mirror in the mid-IR range, a technology that is currently missing.

Continuously graded parabolic quantum wells with excellent optical performances are used to overcome the low‐frequency and thermal limitations of square quantum wells at terahertz (THz) frequencies. The formation of microcavity intersubband polaritons at frequencies as low as 1.8 THz is demonstrated, with a sustained ultra‐strong coupling regime up to a temperature of 200 K. Thanks to the excellent intersubband transition linewidth, polaritons present quality factors up to 17. It is additionally shown that the ultra‐strong coupling regime is preserved when the active region is embedded in sub‐wavelength resonators, with an estimated relative strength η = Ω R /ω 0 = 0.12. This represents an important milestone for future studies of quantum vacuum radiation because such resonators can be optically modulated at ultrafast rates, possibly leading to the generation of non‐classical light via the dynamic Casimir effect. Finally, with an effective volume of , it is estimated that fewer than 3000 electrons per resonator are ultra‐strongly coupled to the quantized electromagnetic mode, proving it is also a promising approach to explore few‐electron polaritonic systems operating at relatively high temperatures.

We demonstrate low temperature deposition conditions for vanadium dioxide (VO 2 ) phase change material by pulsed laser deposition, which are compatible with III–V semiconductors heterostructures typically used in optoelectronic applications. The characterizations of the VO 2 coated thin films grown on GaAs show a 50% change in optical reflectivity in the mid-infrared range and a variation of electric conductivity of two orders of magnitude between the insulating (low temperature) and the metallic (high temperature) states. The transition temperature is estimated around 68 °C (341 K). We also study the functionalization of mid-infrared quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) (operating at wavelengths λ ∼ 7–8 μm) with VO 2 layers, in view of engineering the laser emission properties with an integrated VO 2 layer. We demonstrate QCLs that integrate a VO 2 layer on the surface that interacts with the guided laser mode. A maximum operating temperature of 61 °C (334 K) has been measured.