Shaping the spatiotemporal dynamics of the electron density in a hybrid metal-semiconductor nanostructure

A one-dimensional semiconductor nanostructure is locally excited through a metal aperture. It is shown that the electron density can be coherently localized at desired spatial and temporal positions by using nontrivially shaped laser pulses. To obtain the optimized laser field, Bloch equations for a tight-binding model system are solved together with a genetic pulse-shaping algorithm. Full three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations of the Maxwell–Bloch equations confirm the predicted coherent spatiotemporal control.