No Arabic abstract
We present a scheme of interaction-induced topological bandstructures based on the spin anisotropy of exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities. We predict theoretically that this scheme allows the engineering of topological gaps, without requiring a magnetic field or strong spin-orbit interaction (transverse electric-transverse magnetic splitting). Under non-resonant pumping, we find that an initially topologically trivial system undergoes a topological transition upon the spontaneous breaking of phase symmetry associated with polariton condensation. Under resonant coherent pumping, we find that it is also possible to engineer a topological dispersion that is linear in wavevector -- a property associated with polariton superfluidity.
We present a scheme to obtain anti-chiral edge states in an exciton-polariton honeycomb lattice with strip geometry, where the modes corresponding to both edges propagate in the same direction. Under resonant pumping the effect of a polariton condensate with nonzero velocity in one linear polarization is predicted to tilt the dispersion of polaritons in the other, which results in an energy shift between two Dirac cones and the otherwise flat edge states become tilted. Our simulations show that due to the spatial separation from the bulk modes the edge modes are robust against disorder.
The formation of nonlinear Bloch states in open driven-dissipative system of exciton-polaritons loaded into a weak-contrast 1D periodic lattice is studied numerically and analytically. The condensate is described within the framework of mean-field theory by the coupled equations for the order parameter and for the density of incoherent excitons. The stationary nonlinear solutions having the structure of Bloch waves are studied in detail. It is shown that there is a bifurcation leading to the appearance of a family of essentially nonlinear states. The special feature of these solutions is that its current does not vanish when the quasi-momentum of the state approaches the values equal to the half of the lattice constant. To explain the bifurcations found in numerical simulations a simple perturbative approach is developed. The stability of the nonlinear states is examined by linear spectral analysis and by direct numerical simulations. An experimental scheme allowing the observation of the discussed nonlinear current states is suggested and studied by numerical simulations.
Recently realized higher order topological insulators have taken a surge of interest among the theoretical and experimental condensed matter community. The two-dimensional second order topological insulators give rise to zero-dimensional localized corner modes that reside within the band gap of the system along with edge modes that inhabit a band edge next to bulk modes. Thanks to the topological nature, information can be trapped at the corners of these systems, which will be unhampered even in the presence of disorder. Being localized at the corners, the exchange of information among the corner states is an issue. Here we show that the nonlinearity in an exciton polariton system can allow the coupling between the different corners through the edge states based on optical parametric scattering, realizing a system of multiple connectible topological modes.
We theoretically explore nonresonantly pumped polaritonic graphene, a system consisting of a honeycomb lattice of micropillars in the regime of strong light-matter coupling. We demonstrate that, depending on the parameters of the structure, such as intensity of the pump and coupling strength between the pillars, the system shows rich variety of macroscopic ordering, including analogs of ferromagnetic, antiferromagnetic, and resonant valence bond phases. Transitions between these phases are associated with dramatic reshaping of the spectrum of the system connected with spontaneous appearance of topological order.
We examine the photoluminescence of highly-excited exciton-polariton condensates in semiconductor microcavities. Under strong pumping, exciton-polariton condensates have been observed to undergo a lasing transition where strong coupling between the excitons and photons is lost. We discuss an alternative high-density scenario, where the strong coupling is maintained. We find that the photoluminescence smoothly transitions between the lower polariton energy to the cavity photon energy. An intuitive understanding of the change in spectral characteristics is given, as well as differences to the photoluminescence characteristics of the lasing case.