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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 3: Mini-Symposium: Ultrafast surface dynamics at the space-time limit I

O 3.1: Invited Talk

Monday, March 1, 2021, 10:30–11:00, R1

Actuating and probing a single-molecule switch at femtosecond timescales — Dominik Peller, Carmen Roelcke, Lukas Z. Kastner, Thomas Buchner, Alexander Neef, Johannes Hayes, Florian Albrecht, Rupert Huber, and •Jascha Repp — Department of Physics, University of Regensburg, 93040 Regensburg, Germany

Combining scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) with lightwave electronics [1] has enabled the simultaneous femtosecond and sub-angstrom resolution in observing matter [2]. We now demonstrate the combined femtosecond and sub-angstrom access in the control of matter. Ultrafast localized electric fields in lightwave STM enable exerting atom-scale femtosecond forces to selected atoms. Utilizing these forces to excite coherent structural dynamics, we can modulate the quantum transitions of a single-molecule switch by up to 39% [3]. Further, we exploit the same single-molecule switch to quantitatively resolve the electromagnetic waveform of the tip-confined near-field transients directly inside the tunneling junction at atomic scales [4].

[1] T. L. Cocker et al., Nature Photon. 7, 620 (2013).

[2] T. L. Cocker et al., Nature 539, 263 (2016).

[3] D. Peller et al., Nature 585, 58 (2020).

[4] D. Peller et al., Nature Photonics (2020).