Quantum holographic encoding in a two-dimensional electron gas

Journal Article · Wed May 26 04:00:00 EDT 2010 · Submitted to Nature Nanotechnology

OSTI ID:979946

Moon, Christopher

The advent of bottom-up atomic manipulation heralded a new horizon for attainable information density, as it allowed a bit of information to be represented by a single atom. The discrete spacing between atoms in condensed matter has thus set a rigid limit on the maximum possible information density. While modern technologies are still far from this scale, all theoretical downscaling of devices terminates at this spatial limit. Here, however, we break this barrier with electronic quantum encoding scaled to subatomic densities. We use atomic manipulation to first construct open nanostructures - 'molecular holograms' - which in turn concentrate information into a medium free of lattice constraints: the quantum states of a two-dimensional degenerate Fermi gas of electrons. The information embedded in the holograms is transcoded at even smaller length scales into an atomically uniform area of a copper surface, where it is densely projected into both two spatial degrees of freedom and a third holographic dimension mapped to energy. In analogy to optical volume holography, this requires precise amplitude and phase engineering of electron wavefunctions to assemble pages of information volumetrically. This data is read out by mapping the energy-resolved electron density of states with a scanning tunnelling microscope. As the projection and readout are both extremely near-field, and because we use native quantum states rather than an external beam, we are not limited by lensing or collimation and can create electronically projected objects with features as small as {approx}0.3 nm. These techniques reach unprecedented densities exceeding 20 bits/nm{sup 2} and place tens of bits into a single fermionic state.

• Research Organization: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-76SF00515
• OSTI ID: 979946
• Report Number(s): SLAC-PUB-13995
• Journal Information: Submitted to Nature Nanotechnology, Journal Name: Submitted to Nature Nanotechnology
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
ATOMS
COPPER
DEGREES OF FREEDOM
ELECTRON DENSITY
ELECTRON GAS
FERMI GAS
HOLOGRAPHY
MATSCI
NANOSTRUCTURES
PERFORMANCE
QUANTUM INFORMATION