The article entitled “Suppressed Auger scattering and tunable light emission of Landau-quantized massless Kane electrons” was published in “Nature Photonics” magazine. One of its co-authors is Prof. Marek Potemski, a Visiting Professor at the UW Faculty of Physics. The paper introduces new steps in the research connected with the future technology of Landau level lasers.

As the authors of the article claim, for a long time, scientists have been working on creating the Landau level laser that could be a unique source of monochromatic radiation, widely tunable in the THz and infrared spectral ranges using an externally applied magnetic field. Such a device has never been constructed because of the Auger scattering of Landau-quantized electrons.

Now, the authors of the article propose a gapless HgCdTe alloy with massless Kane electrons as a material in which a cyclotron emission is not gained over by an intrinsic non-radiative recombination channel (the Auger scattering). “Here we show that this scheme does not apply to massless Kane electrons in gapless HgCdTe alloy, in which undesirable Auger scattering is strongly suppressed and the sizeable cyclotron emission observed, for the first time in the case of massless particles. The gapless HgCdTe thus appears as a material of choice for future technology of Landau level lasers,” we can read in the introduction to the paper.

As a result of many experiments, the scientists have demonstrated the cyclotron emissions of the massless electrons for the first time. It was observed in, mentioned above, gapless HgCdTe alloy.

Prof. Marek Potemski, Visiting Professor at the UW Faculty of Physics, is one of the authors of the article entitled “Suppressed Auger scattering and tunable light emission of Landau-quantized massless Kane electrons”. His specialization comprises semi-conductors and nanophysics. He works as a researcher in the Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses (Grenoble, France).