2024/12/17 by Lewis E. MacKenzie, MacKenzie, Lewis E., Peter Kirton +1 · 1 voice
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Luminescence Properties of Advanced Materials #Optics (physics.optics) #Photorefractive and Nonlinear Optics #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Radiation Detection and Scintillator Technologies #physics.chem-ph #physics.optics #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2412.12891
openalex publication_date 2024/12/17 · arxiv published 2024/12/17 · arxiv updated 2025/04/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Superfluorescence (SF) in lanthanide doped upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) is a room-temperature quantum phenomenon, first discovered in 2022. In a SF process, the many emissive lanthanide ions within a single UCNP are coherently coupled by an ultra-short (ns or fs) high-power excitation laser pulse. This leads to a superposition of excited emissive states which decrease the emissive lifetime of the UCNP by a factor proportional to the square of the number of lanthanide ions which are coherently coupled. This results in a dramatic decrease in UCNP emission lifetime from the microsecond regime to the nanosecond regime. Thus SF offers a tantalizing prospect to achieving superior upconversion photon flux in upconversion materials, with potential applications such as imaging and sensing. This perspective article contextualizes how SF-UCNPs can be regarded as a second generation quantum technology, and notes several challenges, opportunities, and open questions for the development of SF-UCNPs.