Lightwave electronics

For some years now, the speed and efficiency of conventional electronics have stagnated as they have reached the limits set by basic physical laws. To escape this stagnation, radical new ways of controlling electrons are being sought. The basic idea of lightwave electronics is to use the oscillating electric field of light to manipulate charge carriers faster than a single cycle of light, which could allow future low-loss electronics to operate at optical clock rates.

Our group has pioneered harnessing the carrier wave of intense THz pulses to accelerate charge carriers on the femtosecond time scale, realising a micrometre-scale quasiparticle accelerator and switching the spin and valley pseudospin of electrons in record time. Furthermore, we were able to demonstrate that electrons can be moved through the surface of a topological insulator without losing energy.