2007/08/21 by Guangqi Li, Li, GuangQi, Sven Welack +5
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Laser-Matter Interactions and Applications #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0708.2908
openalex publication_date 2007/08/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Combining the features of molecular wires and femtosecond laser pulses gives the unique opportunity to optically switch electron currents in molecular devices with very high speed. Based on a weak-coupling approximation between wire and leads a quantum master equation for the population dynamics and the electric current through the molecular wire has been developed which allows for arbitrary time-dependent laser fields interacting with the wire. This formalism is combined with the theory of optimal control. For a tight-binding approximation of the wire we show how to compute the laser pulses to switch the current through the wire on and off. With this approach the desired pattern of the current in time can be chosen in an almost arbitrary fashion.