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Active metasurfaces, which are arrays of actively tunable resonant elements, can dynamically control the wavefront of the scattered light at a subwavelength scale. To date, most active metasurfaces that enable dynamic wavefront shaping operate in reflection. On the other hand, active metasurfaces operating in transmission are of considerable interest as they can readily be integrated with chip-scale light sources, yielding ultra-compact wavefront shaping devices. Here, we report designs for all-dielectric low-loss active metasurfaces which can dynamically manipulate the transmitted light wavefront in the near-infrared wavelength range. Our active metasurfaces feature an array of amorphous silicon (a-Si) pillars on a silica substate, which support resonances with quality factors (Q-factors) as high as 9800, as well as other lower-Q resonances. First, we demonstrate that high-Q resonance dips observed in transmission can be transformed into a transmission resonance peak by positioning a-Si pillar resonators at a prescribed distance from a crystalline Si substrate, defined by a silica spacer layer. Next, we report the design of metasurface geometry with realistic interconnect architectures that enable thermo-optic dynamic beam switching with switching times as low as 7.3 {\mu}s. Beam switching is observed for refractive index differences between neighboring metasurface elements as low as 0.0026. Finally, we demonstrate that metasurface structures with both high-Q and lower-Q modes and realistic interconnect architectures can be used for dynamic beam steering.

The Kondo effect, deriving from a local magnetic impurity mediating electron-electron interactions, constitutes a flourishing basis for understanding a large variety of intricate many-body problems. Its experimental implementation in tunable circuits has made possible important advances through well-controlled investigations. However, these have mostly concerned transport properties, whereas thermodynamic observations - notably the fundamental measurement of the spin of the Kondo impurity - remain elusive in test-bed circuits. Here, with a novel combination of a "charge" Kondo circuit with a charge sensor, we directly observe the state of the impurity and its progressive screening. We establish the universal renormalization flow from a single free spin to a screened singlet, the associated reduction in the magnetization, and the relationship between scaling Kondo temperature and microscopic parameters. In our device, a Kondo pseudospin is realized by two degenerate charge states of a metallic island, which we measure with a non-invasive, capacitively coupled charge sensor. Such pseudospin probe of an engineered Kondo system opens the way to the thermodynamic investigation of many exotic quantum states, including the clear observation of Majorana zero modes through their fractional entropy.

Black phosphorus (BP) offers considerable promise for infrared and visible photonics. Efficient tuning of the bandgap and higher subbands in BP by modulation of the Fermi level or application of vertical electric fields has been previously demonstrated, allowing electrical control of its above bandgap optical properties. Here, we report modulation of the optical conductivity below the band-gap (5-15 um) by tuning the charge density in a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) induced in BP, thereby modifying its free carrier dominated intraband response. With a moderate doping density of 7x10^12/cm2 we were able to observe a polarization dependent epsilon-near-zero behavior in the dielectric permittivity of BP. The intraband polarization sensitivity is intimately linked to the difference in effective fermionic masses along the two crystallographic directions, as confirmed by our measurements. Our results suggest the potential of multilayer BP to allow new optical functions for emerging photonics applications., Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures

Quantum Hall edge channels offer an efficient and controllable platform to study quantum transport in one dimension. Such channels are a prospective tool for the efficient transfer of quantum information at the nanoscale, and play a vital role in exposing intriguing physics. Electric current along the edge carries energy and heat leading to inelastic scattering, which may impede coherent transport. Several experiments attempting to probe the concomitant energy redistribution along the edge reported energy loss via unknown mechanisms of inelastic scattering. Here we employ quantum dots to inject and extract electrons at specific energies, to spectrally analyse inelastic scattering inside quantum Hall edge channels. We show that the "missing energy" puzzle can be untangled by incorporating non-local Auger-like processes, in which energy is redistributed between spatially separate parts of the sample. Our theoretical analysis, accounting for the experimental results, challenges common-wisdom analyses which ignore such non-local decay channels.

Two-dimensional electron gas in the integer quantum Hall regime is investigated numerically by studying the dynamics of an electron hopping on a square lattice subject to a perpendicular magnetic field and random on-site energy with white noise distribution. Focusing on the lowest Landau band we establish an anti-levitation scenario of the extended states: As either the disorder strength $W$ increases or the magnetic field strength $B$ decreases, the energies of the extended states move below the Landau energies pertaining to a clean system. Moreover, for strong enough disorder, there is a disorder dependent critical magnetic field $B_c(W)$ below which there are no extended states at all. A general phase diagram in the $W-1/B$ plane is suggested with a line separating domains of localized and delocalized states., Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures

Low temperature transport measurements on a p-GaAs quantum point contact are presented which reveal the presence of a conductance anomaly that is markedly different from the conventional `0.7 anomaly'. A lateral shift by asymmetric gating of the conducting channel is utilized to identify and separate different conductance anomalies of local and generic origins experimentally. While the more generic 0.7 anomaly is not directly affected by changing the gate configuration, a model is proposed which attributes the additional conductance features to a gate-dependent coupling of the propagating states to localized states emerging due to a nearby potential imperfection. Finite bias conductivity measurements reveal the interplay between the two anomalies consistently with a two-impurity Kondo model.

We investigate the density and temperature-dependent conductance of graphene nanoribbons with varying aspect ratio. Transport is dominated by a chain of quantum dots forming spontaneously due to disorder. Depending on ribbon length, electron density, and temperature, single or multiple quan- tum dots dominate the conductance. Between conductance resonances cotunneling transport at the lowest temperatures turns into activated transport at higher temperatures. The density-dependent activation energy resembles the Coulomb gap in a quantitative manner. Individual resonances show signatures of multi-level transport in some regimes, and stochastic Coulomb blockade in others.

Quantum point contacts implemented in p-type GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures are investigated by low-temperature electrical conductance spectroscopy measurements. Besides one-dimensional conductance quantization in units of $2e^{2}/h$ a pronounced extra plateau is found at about $0.7(2e^{2}/h)$ which possesses the characteristic properties of the so-called "0.7 anomaly" known from experiments with n-type samples. The evolution of the 0.7 plateau in high perpendicular magnetic field reveals the existence of a quasi-localized state and supports the explanation of the 0.7 anomaly based on self-consistent charge localization. These observations are robust when lateral electrical fields are applied which shift the relative position of the electron wavefunction in the quantum point contact, testifying to the intrinsic nature of the underlying physics., Comment: 4.2 pages, 3 figures

The existence of "superconducting islands" (i.e., locally confined regions with superconducting correlations) in amorphous superconducting thin films can account for numerous experimental findings. Such spatial fluctuations in the superconducting gap were indeed observed experimentally, and were shown to persist into the insulating side of the superconductor-insulator transition. In this work a detailed account on the formation and evolution of superconducting islands in disordered two-dimensional superconductors is presented, using a locally self-consistent numerical solution of the Bogoliubov-de-Gennes equations. Specifically, the formation of SC islands is demonstrated, and their evolution with an applied perpendicular magnetic field is studied in details, along with the disorder-induced vortex-pinning. Simulating the presence of a parallel Zeeman field it is demonstrated that the islands are indeed uncorrelated superconducting domains. Experimental predictions based on this analysis are presented., Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures. Some typos corrected, introduction and summary revised, some annotation changed

Properties of disordered thin films are discussed based on the viewpoint that superconducting islands are formed in the system. These lead to superconducting correlations confined in space, which are known to form spontaneously in thin films. Application of a perpendicular magnetic field can drive the system from the superconducting state (characterized by phase-rigidity between the sample edges) to an insulating state in which there are no phase-correlations between the edges of the system. On the insulating side the existence of superconducting islands leads to a non-monotonic magnetoresistance. Several other features seen in experiment are explained., Comment: Contribution to the proceedings of "Fluctuations and phase transitions in superconductors", Nazareth Ilit, Israel, June 10-14, 2007

In a recent experiment, the local current distribution of a two-dimensional electron gas in the quantum Hall regime was probed by measuring the variation of the conductance due to local gating. The main experimental finding was the existence of "hot spots", i.e. regions with high degree of sensitivity to local gating, whose density increases as one approaches the quantum Hall transition. However, the direct connection between these "hot spots" and regions of high current flow is not clear. Here, based on a recent model for the quantum Hall transition consisting of a mixture of perfect and quantum links, the relation between the "hot spots" and the current distribution in the sample has been investigated. The model reproduces the observed dependence of the number and sizes of "hot spots" on the filling factor. It is further demonstrated that these "hot spots" are not located in regions where most of the current flows, but rather, in places where the currents flow both when injected from the left or from the right. A quantitative measure, the harmonic mean of these currents is introduced and correlates very well with the "hot spots" positions.

We have measured the Kondo effect in a quantum ring connected to three terminals. In this configuration non-linear transport measurements allow to check which lead contributes to the Kondo density of states (DOS) and which does not. When the ring is connected to two strongly and one weakly coupled leads, the measurement of the differential conductance through the weakly coupled lead allows to probe directly the Kondo DOS. In addition, by applying a bias between the two strongly coupled leads, we show the splitting of the out-of-equilibrium DOS., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures

We study the Kondo effect of a quantum dot placed in a complex mesoscopic structure. Assuming that electronic interactions are taking place solely on the dot, and focusing on the infinite Hubbard interaction limit, we use a decoupling scheme to obtain an explicit analytic approximate expression for the dot Green function, which fulfills certain Fermi-liquid relations at zero temperature. The details of the complex structure enter into this expression only via the self-energy for the non-interacting case. The effectiveness of the expression is demonstrated for the single impurity Anderson model and for the T-shaped network., Comment: 12 pages 6 figures