Terahertz quantum electronics – QTERA

Nanoelectronics is undoubtedly one of the important driving forces of today’s consumer electronics and is at the heart of the semiconductor industry roadmap for downscaling and introducing new technologies. As a general trend, nanoelectronics experiments are shifting towards frequencies in the GHz range and beyond. These frequencies are now becoming comparable to the internal characteristic time scales that set the quantum dynamics of the devices, resulting in new opportunities for studying the dynamical aspects of quantum mechanics. However, the timescales are beyond what is presently achievable with standard radiofrequency electronics. With this proposal we would like to bridge this gap by leverage on the progress made on THz photon production and use clever photon to electron conversion devices to engineer THz electronic charge pulses that could be used in quantum nanoelectronics. For this purpose the photo-switch will be integrated on chip into a very low temperature setup to access the quantum regime of a nanoelectronic conductor. The ability to generate voltage pulses with a duration as short as one picosecond will allow to access completely new regimes of quantum physics by studying its real time dynamical effects.