ANR project Colector

Collective excitations in topological matter (COLECTOR), December 2019-December 2022

Project coordinator: Dr. Frédéric TEPPE
Russian project coordinator: Pr. Vladimir GAVRILENKO

Collective excitations in topological matter represent a novel field of research focusing on joint effects of non-trivial topology of energy bands and electron-electron interactions. To date, there is little experimental work dealing with Dirac plasmons at the surface of topological insulators, and many other collective excitations, like spin-plasmons, plasmon-polaritons, or plasma-waves have never been studied. These collective modes should hold the non-trivial properties of topological materials with Dirac type band dispersion. Thus, topological collective excitations are expected to be even more useful for future applications than the well-known quantized conductance of topological states.

The main objective of the project is therefore to evaluate theoretically and experimentally, the influence of non-parabolicity and band inversion on electron-electron interactions in topological and Dirac matter, as well as the potential of these new collective excitations to create ultra-efficient sources and detectors in the mid-infrared and terahertz domains. Different collective phenomena will therefore be studied in semiconductor heterostructures known for their topological properties and the relativistic kinetics of their charge carriers: (i) intra-band plasmons, (ii) inter-plasmons -bands, (iii) plasmonic instabilities, (iv) electron-electron interactions under magnetic field.

The COLECTOR consortium gathers French and Russian teams having complementary and internationally recognized skills, both on the physics of electron-electron interactions and topological phases, but also on growth of Dirac materials. HgCdTe-based heterostructures will be manufactured in Russia by one of only three groups in the world with the know-how, while InAs/GaSb quantum wells will be grown in France by one of the world leaders in the field.

Project partners

Partner 1: Laboratoire Charles Coulomb, UMR5221 CNRS&Montpellier University, France
Partner 2: Institut d’Electronique et des Systèmes, UMR5214 CNRS & Montpellier University, France
Partner 3: LPENS Laboratoire de Physique de l’Ecole Normale Superieure (UMR 8023) of l’ENS and CNRS, France
Partner 4: LNCMI Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses, UPR 3228 CNRS, France
Partner 5: Institute for Physics of Microstructures, Russian Academy of science, Russia