We report the existence, symmetry breaking and other instabilities of dark polariton-solitons in semiconductor microcavities operating in the strong coupling regime. These half-light half-matter solitons are potential candidates for applications in all-optical signal processing. Their excitation time and required pump powers are a few orders of magnitude less than those of their weakly coupled light-only counterparts.
With coupled Gross-Piteavskii equations we study excitation of exciton-polariton vortices and antivortices in a pillar microcavity by a Gaussian pump beam. The structure of vortices and antivortices shows a strong dependence on the microcavity radius, pump geometry, and nonlinear exciton-exciton interaction. Due to the nonlinear interaction the strong Gaussian beam cannot excite more polariton vortices or antivortices with respect to the weak one. The calculation demonstrates that the weak Gaussian beam can excite vortex-antivortex pairs, vortices with high angular momentum, and superposition …
The pseudo-spin dynamics of propagating exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities are known to be strongly influenced by TE-TM splitting. As a vivid consequence, in the Rayleigh scattering regime, the TE-TM splitting gives rise to the optical spin Hall effect (OSHE). Much less is known about its role in the nonlinear optical regime in which four-wave mixing for example allows the formation of spatial patterns in the polariton density, such that hexagons and two-spot patterns are observable in the far field. Here we present a detailed analysis of spin-dependent four-wave mixing processe…
Solitons are self-sustained wavepackets that occur in many physical systems. Their recent demonstration in optical microresonators has provided a new platform for study of nonlinear optical physics with practical implications for miniaturization of time standards, spectroscopy tools and frequency metrology systems. However, despite its importance to understanding of soliton physics as well as development of new applications, imaging the rich dynamical behaviour of solitons in microcavities has not been possible. These phenomena require a difficult combination of high-temporal-resolution and lo…
Solitons are wavepackets that resist dispersion through a self-induced potential well. They are studied in many fields, but are especially well known in optics on account of the relative ease of their formation and control in optical fiber waveguides. Besides their many interesting properties, solitons are important to optical continuum generation, in mode-locked lasers and have been considered as a natural way to convey data over great distances. Recently, solitons have been realized in microcavities thereby bringing the power of microfabrication methods to future applications. This work repo…
Planar microcavities filled with active materials containing excitonic resonances host radiative exciton-polariton (polariton) modes with in-plane wave vectors within the light cone. They also host at least one mode guided in the cavity plane by total internal reflection and which is not radiatively coupled to the vacuum modes except through defects or sample edges. We show that polariton lasing mediated by polariton stimulated scattering can occur concomitantly in both types of modes in a microcavity. By adjusting the detuning between the exciton and the radiative photon mode one can favor po…
We develop a theory of spin fluctuations of exciton-polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity under the non-resonant unpolarized pumping. It is shown that the corresponding spin noise is sensitive to the scattering rates in the system, occupation of the ground state, statistics of polaritons, and interactions. The spin noise spectrum drastically narrows in the polariton lasing regime due to formation of a polariton condensate, while its shape can become non-Lorentzian owing to interaction-induced spin decoherence.
Exciton polaritons in semiconductor microcavities exhibit many fundamental physical effects, with some of them amenable to being controlled by external fields. The polariton transport is affected by the polaritonic spin-orbit interaction, which is caused by the splitting of transverse-electric and transverse-magnetic (TE-TM) modes. This is the basis for a polaritonic Hall effect, called optical spin Hall effect (OSHE), which is related to the formation of spin/polarization textures in momentum space, determining anisotropic ballistic transport, as well as related textures in real space. Owing …
Microcomb generation with simultaneous $χ^{(2)}$ and $χ^{(3)}$ nonlinearities brings new possibilities for ultra-broadband and potentially self-referenced integrated comb sources. However, the evolution of the intracavity field involving multiple nonlinear processes shows complex dynamics that is still poorly understood. Here we report on strong soliton regulation induced by fundamental-second-harmonic (FD-SH) mode coupling. The formation of solitons from chaos is extensively investigated based on coupled Lugiato-Lefever equations. The soliton generation shows more deterministic behaviors in t…
We report on polariton states bound to defects in planar GaAs/AlAs microcavities grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The defect types relevant for the spatial polariton dynamics in these structures are cross-hatch misfit dislocations, and point-like defects extended over several micrometers. We attribute the latter defects to Ga droplets emitted occasionally by the Ga cell during the growth. These defects, also known as oval defects, result in a dome-like local modulation of surface, which is translated into the cavity structure and leads to a lateral modulation of the cavity polariton energy of …
We show theoretically that a weakly interacting gas of spin-polarized exciton-polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity supports propagation of spin waves. The spin waves are characterised by a parabolic dispersion at small wavevectors which is governed by the polariton-polariton interaction constant. Due to spin-anisotropy of polariton-polariton interactions the dispersion of spin waves depends on the orientation of the total polariton spin. For the same reason, the frequency of homogeneous spin precession/polariton spin resonance depends on their polarization degree.
We study the polarization dynamics of a spatially expanding polariton condensate under nonresonant linearly polarized optical excitation. The spatially and temporally resolved polariton emission reveals the formation of non-trivial spin textures in the form of a quadruplet polarization pattern both in the linear and circular Stokes parameters, and an octuplet in the diagonal Stokes parameter. The continuous rotation of the polariton pseudospin vector through the condensate due to TE-TM splitting exhibits an ordered pattern of half-skyrmions associated with a half-integer topological number. A …
Exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities generate fascinating effects such as long-range spatial coherence and Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC), which are attractive for their potential use in low threshold lasers, vortices and slowing light, etc. However, currently most of exciton-polariton effects either occur at cryogenic temperature or rely on expensive cavity fabrication procedures. Further exploring new semiconductor microcavities with stronger exciton photon interaction strength is extensively needed. Herein, we demonstrate room temperature photon exciton strong coupling in hyb…
Hybrid light-matter states, polaritons, are one of the central concepts in modern quantum optics and condensed matter physics. Polaritons emerge as a result of strong interaction between an optical mode and a material resonance, which is frequently realized in molecular, van der Waals, or solid-state platforms (1-7). However, this route requires accurate (nano)fabrication and often lacks simple means for tunability, which could be disadvantageous in some applications. Here, we use a different approach to realize polaritonic states by employing a stable equilibrium between two parallel gold nan…
Skyrmions in scalar fields of non-Hermitian optical microcavities: spontaneous formation, nonlinear control, and optical forces
Paderborn University（帕德博恩大学）；Wyant College of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学怀亚特光学科学学院）；Department of Physics, University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学物理系）；University of Stuttgart（斯图加特大学）
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 …
Bosons hopping across sites and interacting on-site are the essence of the Bose-Hubbard model (BHM). Inspired by the success of BHM simulators with atoms in optical lattices, proposals for implementing the BHM with photons in coupled nonlinear cavities have emerged. Two coupled semiconductor microcavities constitute a model system where the hopping, interaction, and decay of exciton polaritons --- mixed light-matter quasiparticles --- can be engineered in combination with site-selective coherent driving to implement the driven-dissipative two-site optical BHM. Here we explore the interplay of …
This paper introduces a new approach to neuromorphic photonics in which microcavities exhibiting strong exciton-photon interaction may serve as building blocks of optical spiking neurons. The experimental results demonstrate the intrinsic property of exciton-polaritons to resemble the Leaky Integrate-and-Fire spiking mechanism. It is shown that exciton-polariton microcavities when non-resonantly pumped with a pulsed laser exhibit leaky-integration due to relaxation of the excitonic reservoir, threshold-and-fire mechanism due to transition to Bose-Einstein condensate, and resetting due to stimu…
We show that when following a simple cavity design metric, a quantum well exciton-microcavity photon coupling constant can be larger than the exciton binding energy in GaAs based optical microcavities. Such a very strong coupling significantly reduces the relative electron-hole motion and makes the polaritons robust against phonon collisions. The corresponding polariton dissociation and saturation boundaries on the phase diagram are much improved, and our calculations suggest the possibility of constructing a room temperature, high power exciton-polariton laser without resorting to wide bandga…
Observations of polariton condensation in semiconductor microcavities suggest that polaritons can be exploited as a novel type of laser with low input-power requirements. The low-excitation regime is approximately equivalent to thermal equilibrium, and a higher excitation results in more dominant nonequilibrium features. Although standard photon lasing has been experimentally observed in the high excitation regime, e-h pair binding can still remain even in the high-excitation regime theoretically. Therefore, the photoluminescence with a different photon lasing mechanism is predicted to be diff…
We present a correlative study of structural and optical properties of natural defects in planar semiconductor microcavities grown by molecular beam epitaxy, which are showing a localized polariton spectrum as reported in Zajac et al., Phys. Rev. B 85, 165309 (2012). The three-dimensional spatial structure of the defects was studied using combined focussed ion beam (FIB) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). We find that the defects originate from a local increase of a GaAs layer thickness. Modulation heights of up to 140nm for oval defects and 90nm for round defects are found, while the lat…
We study a model of a photon mode dipole-coupled to a medium of two-level oscillators in a microcavity in the presence of dephasing processes introduced by coupling to external baths. Decoherence processes can be classified as pair-breaking or non-pair-breaking in analogy with magnetic or non-magnetic impurities in superconductors. In the absence of dephasing, the ground state of the model is a polariton condensate with a gap in the excitation spectrum. Increase of the pair-breaking parameter $γ$ reduces the gap, which becomes zero at a critical value $γ_{C1}$; for large $γ$, the conventional …
A gap soliton is a solitonic state existing inside the band gap of an infinite-periodic exciton-polariton condensate (EPC). The combination of surface states and gap solitons forms the so named surface gap solitons (SGSs). We analyze the existence of SGSs near the interface between uniform and semi-infinite periodic EPCs. We find that SGSs exist only when the system is excited by a pump with low power and small width. As the pump power or width increases, SGSs become unstable.
We consider the linear and nonlinear models of generation of the surface plasmon-polaritons on the boundary of nonmagnetic dielectric medium and nonmagnetic metal. We have shown how the three-dimensional incident wave is transformed to the fluxes of surface plasmon-polaritons at the first and second harmonics of the TM-mode. These "slow" and "fast" fluxes of the surface plasmon-polaritons are formed at the both harmonics at the weak interaction. We obtain that the pulses of surface plasmon-polaritons propagate as the bright and dark solitons at the strong interaction of the first and second ha…
Exciton polaritons in atomically-thin transition metal dichalcogenide crystals (monolayer TMDCs) have emerged as a promising candidate to enable topological transport, ultra-efficient laser technologies, and collective quantum phenomena such as polariton condensation and superfluidity at room temperature. However, integrating monolayer TMDCs into high-quality planar microcavities to achieve the required strong coupling between the cavity photons and the TMDC excitons (bound electron-hole pairs) has proven challenging. Previous approaches to integration had to compromise between various adverse…
Organic exciton-photon polariton lasers have recently been shown to be remarkable candidates for the realization of efficient sources of coherent light operating at room temperature. While their thresholds are now comparable with conventional organic photon lasers, tuning of molecular conformation and orientation as a means to further enhance their performance remains largely unexplored. Here, we first report a two-fold reduction in the threshold of a polariton laser based on a high-Q microcavity filled with an active layer of poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene) (PFO) when 15% β-phase conformation is in…
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 containing 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…
The similarities and differences between polariton condensation in microcavities and standard lasing in a semiconductor cavity structure are reviewed. The recent experiments on "photon condensation" are also reviewed.
A theoretical variation between the two distinct light-matter coupling regimes, namely weak and strong coupling, becomes uniquely feasible in open optical Fabry-Pérot microcavities with low mode volume, as discussed here. In combination with monolayers of transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) such as WS2, which exhibits a large exciton oscillator strength and binding energy, the room-temperature observation of hybrid bosonic quasiparticles, referred to as exciton-polaritons and characterized by a Rabi splitting, comes into reach. In this context, our simulations using the transfer-matrix me…
The optical spin-Hall effect results in the formation of an antisymmetric real space polarization pattern forming spin currents. In this paper, we show that the exciton-polariton parametric scattering allows us to reverse the sign of these currents. We describe the pulsed resonant excitation of a strongly coupled microcavity with a linearly polarized pump at normal incidence. The energy of the pulse is set to be close to the inflexion point of the polariton dispersion and the focusing in real space populates the reciprocal space on a ring. For pumping powers below the parametric scattering thr…
We investigate the propagation and scattering of polaritons in a planar GaAs microcavity in the linear regime under resonant excitation. The propagation of the coherent polariton wave across an extended defect creates phase and intensity patterns with identical qualitative features previously attributed to dark and half-dark solitons of polaritons. We demonstrate that these features are observed for negligible nonlinearity (i.e., polariton-polariton interaction) and are, therefore, not sufficient to identify dark and half-dark solitons. A linear model based on the Maxwell equations is shown to…
We investigate a new kind of dark solitons and vortices that can exist in the exciton-polariton condensates. These structures have discontinuity in the excitonic part of the polaritonic field and exist due to an intrinsic multiplicity of the solutions for the exciton density in the given optical field. Reported solutions are characterized by two very distinct localization scales, and hence are coined as dual-core dark solitons and vortices.
Half-integer topological defects in polariton condensates can be regarded as magnetic charges, with respect to built-in effective magnetic fields present in microcavities. We show how an integer topological defect can be separated into a pair of half-integer ones, paving the way towards flows of magnetic charges: spin currents or magnetricity. We discuss the corresponding experimental implementation within microwires (with half-solitons) and planar microcavities (with half-vortices).
The realization of exciton-polaritons -- hybrid excitations of semiconductor quantum well excitons and cavity photons -- has been of great technological and scientific significance. In particular, the short-range collisional interaction between excitons has enabled explorations into a wealth of nonequilibrium and hydrodynamical effects that arise in weakly nonlinear polariton condensates. Yet, the ability to enhance optical nonlinearities would enable quantum photonics applications and open up a new realm of photonic many-body physics in a scalable and engineerable solid-state environment. Her…
Semiconductor microcavities are widely used to study collective interactions of cavity exciton-polaritons leading to their condensation phenomenon. Exciton-light interaction is highly enhanced in such structures due to the resonance enhancement of the electromagnetic field inside the high quality cavity. Considerably lower interest is concerned to exciton states non-resonant with the cavity mode for which the exciton-photon interaction is strongly reduced due to the existence of the cavity. We point out here that these states are responsible for non-classical light generation in semiconductor …
We report the existence, and study mobility and interactions of gap polariton solitons in a microcavity with a periodic potential, where the light field is strongly coupled to excitons. Gap solitons are formed due to the interplay between the repulsive exciton-exciton interaction and cavity dispersion. The analysis is carried out in an analytical form, using the coupled-mode (CM) approximation, and also by means of numerical methods.
We use a one-dimensional polariton fluid in a semiconductor microcavity to explore the rich nonlinear dynamics of counter-propagating interacting Bose fluids. The intrinsically driven-dissipative nature of the polariton fluid allows to use resonant pumping to impose a phase twist across the fluid. When the polariton-polariton interaction energy becomes comparable to their kinetic energy, linear interference fringes transform into a train of solitons. A novel type of bistable behavior controlled by the phase twist across the fluid is experimentally evidenced.
