Screw-dislocation-engineered quantum dot: geometry-tunable nonlinear optics, orbital qubit addressability, and torsion metrology

TL;DR

This paper explores how screw dislocation-induced torsion in quantum dots enables geometry-tunable nonlinear optics, orbital qubit control, and nanoscale torsion sensing, with potential applications in quantum information and metrology.

Contribution

It introduces a continuum model of torsion in quantum dots, revealing geometry-controlled optical transitions, flux-tunable orbital pseudospins, and torsion-based metrology methods.

Findings

Torsion causes a blue-shift in optical transition energies from 6.8 to 15.5 meV.

Aharonov--Bohm flux controls level splitting and optical addressability.

Linear torsion dependence enables nanoscale torsion metrology with ~10^5 m^{-1} resolution.

Abstract

We study a single electron confined in a uniform-torsion medium, a continuum model of a screw dislocation density, in a perpendicular magnetic field, and in the presence of an Aharonov--Bohm flux. Torsion alone produces radial confinement without any \textit{ad hoc} potential, while the Aharonov--Bohm phase breaks the usual $m\leftrightarrow -m$ symmetry. From the exact spectrum and wave functions, we find: (i) a torsion-controlled optical transition whose energy blue-shifts from $\sim 6.8$ to $\sim 15.5$~meV and whose saturation intensity varies by an order of magnitude, enabling geometry-programmable optical switching; (ii) an Aharonov--Bohm-tunable ``angular pseudospin'' formed by the $m=\pm1$ states, with flux-controlled level splitting and asymmetric oscillator strengths that allow selective optical addressability; and (iii) an approximately linear torsion dependence of the transition energy that enables nanoscale torsion metrology with an estimated resolution of $\sim 10^{5}~\mathrm{m}^{-1}$. In this context, ``torsion'' refers to the experimentally relevant continuum limit of a uniform density of parallel screw dislocations, i.e., a crystal with finite torsion but vanishing curvature, which can, in practice, be engineered and probed in twisted nanowires and strained semiconductor heterostructures. We also show how torsion provides \textit{in situ} control of emitter--cavity detuning and light--matter coupling in cavity QED, in direct analogy with strain tuning of semiconductor quantum dots in nanocavities, but here arising from a purely geometric/topological parameter.