A nanoscale vacuum-tube diode triggered by few-cycle laser pulses

We propose and demonstrate a nanoscale vacuum-tube diode triggered by few-cycle near-infrared laser pulses. It represents an ultrafast electronic device based on light fields, exploiting near-field optical enhancement at surfaces of two metal nanotips. The sharper of the two tips displays a stronger...

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Veröffentlicht in:Applied physics letters 2015-02, Vol.106 (5)
Hauptverfasser: Higuchi, Takuya, Maisenbacher, Lothar, Liehl, Andreas, Dombi, Péter, Hommelhoff, Peter
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:We propose and demonstrate a nanoscale vacuum-tube diode triggered by few-cycle near-infrared laser pulses. It represents an ultrafast electronic device based on light fields, exploiting near-field optical enhancement at surfaces of two metal nanotips. The sharper of the two tips displays a stronger field-enhancement, resulting in larger photoemission yields at its surface. One laser pulse with a peak intensity of 4.7 × 1011 W/cm2 triggers photoemission of ∼16 electrons from the sharper cathode tip, while emission from the blunter anode tip is suppressed by 19 dB to ∼0.2 electrons per pulse. Thus, the laser-triggered current between two tips exhibit a rectifying behavior, in analogy to classical vacuum-tube diodes. According to the kinetic energy of the emitted electrons and the distance between the tips, the total operation time of this laser-triggered nanoscale diode is estimated to be below 1 ps.
ISSN:0003-6951
1077-3118
DOI:10.1063/1.4907607