Dettagli Progetti e Finanziamenti

Abstract: Light-harvesting complexes (LHC) are essential to life, since they provide an efficient light-matter interface to harvest solar energy. Designed by nature over billions of years, they have been extensively studied to understand the basic mechanisms that make them work. Furthermore, such investigations have been expanded in the context of quantum physics, where coherence is considered important for energy transport. While theoretical models exist, the used spectroscopic approaches are still not able to address individual LHCs, thus preventing a more quantitative comparison between theory and experiment. Artificial LHCs would be highly desirable not only as a model system for improving theory and experiments, but also to develop light-harvesting devices. These LHCs should be photostable, scalable, and require sets of nearly identical emitters at room temperature, organized in a well-defined geometrical pattern. Color centers in diamond, especially the silicon-vacancy (SiV) center, can be created at desired locations by ion implantation followed by annealing, and they exhibit a very small inhomogeneous broadening even at room temperature. These unique properties could be exploited to create scalable LHCs that can be engineered in order to gain insight and optimize performances. Our project aims at modelling, fabricating and investigating LHCs based on SiV centers in diamond. We will employ advanced implantation techniques to produce the LHCs and firstly study their properties at cryogenic temperatures. Next, we will exploit plasmonic structures to obtain hybrid systems that can operate at room temperature. We will use different spectroscopic approaches to gain insight and, specifically, 2D spectroscopy applied to single LHCs. Our studies offer a deeper understanding on light-matter interaction in such complex quantum systems and introduce a designer approach to light harvesting, which could lead to a miniaturized energy supply for information technology and sensing.