Semiconductor microcavities operating in the polaritonic regime are highly non-linear, high speed systems due to the unique half-light, half-matter nature of polaritons. Here, we report for the first time the observation of propagating multi-soliton
polariton patterns consisting of multi-peak structures either along (x) or perpendicular to (y) the direction of propagation. Soliton arrays of up to 5 solitons are observed, with the number of solitons controlled by the size or power of the triggering laser pulse. The break-up along the x direction occurs due to interplay of bistability, negative effective mass and polariton-polariton scattering, while in the y direction the break-up results from nonlinear phase-dependent interactions of propagating fronts. We show the experimental results are in good agreement with numerical modelling. Our observations are a step towards ultrafast all-optical signal processing using sequences of solitons as bits of information.
We present a method to implement 3-dimensional polariton confinement with in-situ spectral tuning of the cavity mode. Our tunable microcavity is a hybrid system consisting of a bottom semiconductor distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) with a cavity cont
aining quantum wells (QWs) grown on top and a dielectric concave DBR separated by a micrometer sized gap. Nanopositioners allow independent positioning of the two mirrors and the cavity mode energy can be tuned by controlling the distance between them. When close to resonance we observe a characteristic anticrossing between the cavity modes and the QW exciton demonstrating strong coupling. For the smallest radii of curvature concave mirrors of 5.6 $mu$m and 7.5 $mu$m real-space polariton imaging reveals submicron polariton confinement due to the hemispherical cavity geometry.
We report on the spin properties of bright polariton solitons supported by an external pump to compensate losses. We observe robust circularly polarised solitons when a circularly polarised pump is applied, a result attributed to phase synchronisatio
n between nondegenerate TE and TM polarised polariton modes at high momenta. For the case of a linearly polarised pump either s+ or s- circularly polarised bright solitons can be switched on in a controlled way by a s+ or s- writing beam respectively. This feature arises directly from the widely differing interaction strengths between co- and cross-circularly polarised polaritons. In the case of orthogonally linearly polarised pump and writing beams, the soliton emission on average is found to be unpolarised, suggesting strong spatial evolution of the soliton polarisation, a conclusion supported by polarisation correlation measurements. The observed results are in agreement with theory, which predicts stable circularly polarised solitons and unstable linearly polarised solitons resulting in spatial evolution of their polarisation.
