ICFO – The Institute of Photonic Sciences

About: ICFO – The Institute of Photonic Sciences is a facility organization based out in Barcelona, Spain. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Quantum & Quantum entanglement. The organization has 872 authors who have published 1965 publications receiving 56273 citations.

Resonant Edge-State Switching in Polariton Topological Insulators

Abstract: Topological insulators are unique devices supporting unidirectional edge states at their interfaces. Due to topological protection, such edge states persist in the presence of disorder and do not experience backscattering upon interaction with defects. We show that despite the topological protection and the fact that such states at the opposite edges of a ribbon carry opposite currents, there exists a physical mechanism allowing to resonantly couple topological excitations propagating at opposite edges. Such mechanism uses weak periodic temporal modulations of the system parameters and does not affect the internal symmetry and topology of the system. We study this mechanism in truncated honeycomb arrays of microcavity pillars, where topological insulation is possible for polaritons under the combined action of spin-orbit coupling and Zeeman splitting in the external magnetic field. The temporal modulation of the potential leads to a periodic switching between topological states with the same Bloch momentum, but located at the opposite edges. The switching rate is found to increase for narrower ribbon structures and for larger modulation depth, though it is changing nonmonotonically with the Bloch momentum of the input edge state. Our results provide a promising realization of a coupling device based on topologically protected states. The proposed scheme can be used in other topological photonic and condensed matter systems, including Floquet insulators and graphene.

Monolithic CIGS–Perovskite Tandem Cell for Optimal Light Harvesting without Current Matching

Abstract: We present a novel monolithic architecture for optimal light harvesting in multijunction thin film solar cells. In the configuration we consider, formed by a perovskite (PVK) cell overlying a CIGS cell, the current extracted from the two different junctions is decoupled by the insertion of a dielectric nonperiodic photonic multilayer structure. This photonic multilayer is designed by an inverse integration approach to confine the incident sunlight above the PVK band gap in the PVK absorber layer, while increasing the transparency for sunlight below the PVK band gap for an efficient coupling into the CIGS bottom cell. To match the maximum power point voltages in a parallel connection of the PVK and CIGS cells, the latter is divided into two subcells by means of a standard three-laser scribing connection. Using realistic parameters for all the layers in the multijunction architecture we predict power conversion efficiencies of 28%. This represents an improvement of 24% and 26% over the best CIGS and PVK sin...

An extremely thin and robust interconnecting layer providing 76% fill factor in a tandem polymer solar cell architecture

Abstract: We report a thin and robust interconnecting layer (ICL) for polymer tandem solar cells. This ICL shows low absorption, good electrical contacts, large work function contrast and robustness. Its use yields tandem cells with a very high fill factor of 76%, making this ICL a promising component of future highly efficient multijunction organic solar cells.

Experimental multipartite entanglement and randomness certification of the W state in the quantum steering scenario

Abstract: Recently, Cavalcanti et al (2015) proposed a method to certify the presence of entanglement in asymmetric networks, where some users do not have control over the measurements they are performing. Such asymmetry naturally emerges in realistic situations, such as in cryptographic protocols over quantum networks. Here we implement such 'semi-device-independent' techniques to experimentally witness all types of entanglement on a three-qubit photonic W state. Furthermore, we analyse the amount of genuine randomness that can be certified in this scenario from any bipartition of the three-qubit W state.

Synthesis and Thermoelectric Properties of Noble Metal Ternary Chalcogenide Systems of Ag–Au–Se in the Forms of Alloyed Nanoparticles and Colloidal Nanoheterostructures

Abstract: The optimization of a material functionality requires both the rational design and precise engineering of its structural and chemical parameters. In this work, we show how colloidal chemistry is an excellent synthetic choice for the synthesis of novel ternary nanostructured chalcogenides, containing exclusively noble metals, with tailored morphology and composition and with potential application in the energy conversion field. Specifically, the Ag–Au–Se system has been explored from a synthetic point of view, which leads to a set of Ag2Se-based hybrid and ternary nanoparticles including the room temperature synthesis of the rare ternary Ag3AuSe2 fischesserite phase. An in-depth structural and chemical characterization of all nanomaterials has been performed, which proofed especially useful for unravelling the reaction mechanism behind the formation of the ternary phase in solution. The work is complemented with the thermal and electric characterization of a ternary Ag–Au–Se nanocomposite with promising re...