Tadeas Liska with Jesse Berezovsky
Fabrication and characterization of integrated optical cavities for enhanced spin measurements
Spintronics is an emerging field with numerous applications including quantum computing of which a key component is the ability to monitor the spin-state of a system. Such monitoring can be achieved optically using spin-photon interactions such as the Faraday effect. Optical cavities provide an approach to enhancing the efficiency of such measurements. We will simulate, fabricate, and characterize an optical cavity containing CdSe nanocrystal quantum dots in which spins may be initialized and probed. A simulation of the planar optical cavity was performed in the MEEP framework, developed at MIT, and scripted with Python. The cavity studied consists of alternately stacked layers of SiO2 and TiO2, which constitute a series of Bragg reflectors enclosing a thick layer of SiO2. The incident light encounters the Bragg reflector and eventually becomes trapped within the thicker SiO2 cavity resulting in numerous internal reflections. The Bragg reflector cavity will be constructed using an e-beam deposition system and tested in the Berezovsky lab, measuring parameters such as the cavity Q-factor, Purcell factor, and Faraday rotation enhancement.