Terahertz Field Enhancement and Photon-Assisted Tunneling in Single-Molecule Transistors

Phys Rev Lett. 2015 Sep 25;115(13):138302. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.138302. Epub 2015 Sep 23.

Abstract

We have investigated the electron transport in single-C_{60}-molecule transistors under the illumination of intense monochromatic terahertz (THz) radiation. By employing an antenna structure with a sub-nm-wide gap, we concentrate THz radiation beyond the diffraction limit and focus it onto a single molecule. Photon-assisted tunneling (PAT) in the single molecule transistors is observed in both the weak-coupling and Kondo regimes. The THz power dependence of the PAT conductance indicates that when the incident THz intensity is a few tens of mW, the THz field induced at the molecule exceeds 100 kV/cm, which is enhanced by a factor of ~10^{5} from the field in the free space.