No Arabic abstract
Exciton-polaritons (polaritons herein) offer a unique nonlinear platform for studies of collective macroscopic quantum phenomena in a solid state system. Shaping of polariton flow and polariton confinement via potential landscapes created by nonresonant optical pumping has gained considerable attention due to the degree of flexibility and control offered by optically-induced potentials. Recently, large density-dependent energy shifts (blueshifts) exhibited by optically trapped polaritons at low densities, below the bosonic condensation threshold, were interpreted as an evidence of strong polariton-polariton interactions [Nat. Phys. 13, 870 (2017)]. In this work, we further investigate the origins of these blueshifts in optically-induced circular traps and present evidence of significant blueshift of the polariton energy due to reshaping of the optically-induced potential with laser pump power. Our work demonstrates strong influence of the effective potential formed by an optically-injected excitonic reservoir on the energy blueshifts observed below and up to the polariton condensation threshold and suggests that the observed blueshifts arise due to interaction of polaritons with the excitonic reservoir, rather than due to polariton-polariton interaction.
Exciton-polaritons can condense to a macroscopic quantum state through a non-equilibrium process of pumping and decay. In recent experiments, polariton condensates are used to observe, for a short time, nonlinear Josephson phenomena by coupling two condensates. However, it is still not clear how these phenomena are affected by the pumping and decay at long times and how the coupling alters the polariton condensation. Here, we consider a polariton Josephson junction pumped on one side and study its dynamics within a mean-field theory. The Josephson current is found to give rise to multi-stability of the stationary states, which are sensitive to the initial conditions and incoherent noises. These states can be attributed to either the self-trapping effect or the parity-time (PT) symmetry of the system. These results can be used to explain the emission spectra and the $pi$-phase locking observed in recent experiments. We further predict that the multi-stability can reduce to the self-trapped state if the PT symmetry is broken. Moreover, the polaritons can condense even below the threshold, exhibiting hysteresis.
Bose-Einstein condensate of exciton polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity is a macroscopically populated coherent quantum state subject to concurrent pumping and decay. Debates about the fundamental nature of the condensed phase in this open quantum system still persist. Here, we gain a new insight into the spontaneous condensation process by imaging long-lifetime exciton polaritons in a high-quality inorganic microcavity in the single-shot optical excitation regime, without averaging over multiple condensate realisations. In this highly non-stationary regime, a condensate is strongly influenced by the `hot incoherent reservoir, and reservoir depletion is critical for the transition to the ground energy and momentum state. Condensates formed by more photonic exciton polaritons exhibit dramatic reservoir-induced density filamentation and shot-to-shot fluctuations. In contrast, condensates of more excitonic quasiparticles display smooth density and are second-order coherent. Our observations show that the single-shot measurements offer a unique opportunity to study formation of macroscopic phase coherence during a quantum phase transition in a solid state system.
We demonstrate, experimentally and theoretically, a Talbot effect for hybrid light-matter waves -- exciton-polariton condensate formed in a semiconductor microcavity with embedded quantum wells. The characteristic Talbot carpet is produced by loading the exciton-polariton condensate into a microstructured one dimensional periodic array of mesa traps, which creates an array of sources for coherent polariton flow in the plane of the quantum wells. The spatial distribution of the Talbot fringes outside the mesas mimics the near-field diffraction of a monochromatic wave on a periodic amplitude and phase grating with the grating period comparable to the wavelength. Despite the lossy nature of the polariton system, the Talbot pattern persists for distances exceeding the size of the mesas by an order of magnitude.
We consider exciton-polaritons in a honeycomb lattice of micropillars subjected to circularly polarized (${sigma_pm}$) incoherent pumps, which are arranged to form two domains in the lattice. We predict that the nonlinear interaction between the polaritons and the reservoir excitons gives rise to the topological valley Hall effect where in each valley two counterpropagating helical edge modes appear. Under a resonant pump, ${sigma_pm}$ polaritons propagate in different directions without being reflected around bends. The polaritons propagating along the interface have extremely high effective lifetimes and show fair robustness against disorder. This paves the way for robust exciton-polariton spin separating and transporting channels in which polaritons attain and maintain high degrees of spin polarization, even in the presence of spin relaxation.
We study the problem of high temperature Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of atom-light polaritons in a waveguide cavity appearing due to interaction of two-level atoms with (non-resonant) quantized optical radiation, in the strong coupling regime, in the presence of optical collisions (OCs) with buffer gas particles. Specifically, we propose a special biconical waveguide cavity (BWC), permitting localization and trapping of low branch (LB) polaritons imposed by the variation of the waveguide radius in longitudinal direction. We have shown that critical temperature of BEC occurring in the system can be high enough -- few hundred Kelvins; it is connected with photon-like character of LB polaritons and strongly depends on waveguide cavity parameters. In the case of a linear trapping potential we obtain an Airy-shaped polariton condensate wave function which, when disturbed out of equilibrium, exhibits small amplitude oscillations with the characteristic period in the picosecond domain.