Semiconductor quantum dots in photonic cavities are strongly coupled light-matter systems with prospective applications in optoelectronic devices and quantum information processing. Here we present a theoretical study of the coupled exciton--light field dynamics of a planar quantum dot ensemble, treated as two-level systems, embedded in a photonic cavity modeled by Maxwell's equations. When excited by coupling an external short laser pulse into the cavity, we find an exciton-polariton-like behavior for weak excitation and Rabi oscillations for strong excitation with a sharp transition between these regimes. In the transition region we find highly non-linear dynamics involving high harmonics of the fundamental oscillation. We perform a numerical study based on the Finite-Difference-Time-Domain method for the solution of Maxwell's equations coupled to Bloch equations for the quantum dots and also derive an analytical model to describe the coupled cavity-quantum dot system, which allows us to describe the light field dynamics in terms of a Newton-like dynamics in an effective anharmonic potential. From the shape of this potential combined with the initial conditions the transition can be well understood. The model is then extended to a broadened ensemble of quantum dots. For weak excitation the polariton spectrum broadens and the lines slightly shift, however, the sharp transition to the Rabi oscillation regime is still present. Furthermore, we find a second, lower threshold with additional lines in the spectra which can be traced back to Rabi oscillations driven by the polariton modes. Our approach provides new insights in the dynamics of both quantum dot and light field in the photonic structure.
We propose a novel physical mechanism for creation of long lived macroscopic exciton-photon qubits in semiconductor microcavities with embedded quantum wells in the strong couping regime. We argue that the coherence time of Rabi oscillations can be dramatically enhanced due to their stimulated pumping from a permanent thermal reservoir of polaritons. The polariton qubit is a superposition of lower branch (LP) and upper branch (UP) exciton-polariton states. We discuss applications of such qubits for quantum information processing, cloning and storage purposes.
We develop the theoretical formalism to calculate second-order correlations in dissipative exciton-polariton system and we propose intensity-intensity correlation experiments to reveal the physics of exciton-light coupling in semiconductor microcavities in the Rabi oscillation regime. We predict a counter intuitive behaviour of the correlator between upper and lower polariton branches: due to the decoherence caused by stochastic exciton-photon conversions this correlator is expected to decrease below 1, while the individual second-order coherence of upper and lower polaritons exhibits non-mono…
Exciton-photon beats known as polariton Rabi oscillations in semiconductor microcavities are usually excited by short pulses of light. We consider a different pumping scheme, assuming a cw pumping of the Rabi oscillator from an exciton reservoir. We account for the initial pulse of light setting the phase, exciton decay due to exciton-phonon and exciton-exciton scattering, photon leakage, and blueshift of the exciton resonance due to interactions. We find non-trivial stationary solutions reminiscent of Kapitza pendulum, where polaritons are accumulated at the upper branch while the lower branc…
We present a comprehensive theoretical description of quantum well exciton-polaritons imbedded in a planar semiconductor microcavity. The exact non-local dielectric response of the quantum well exciton is treated in detail. The 4-spinor structure of the hole subband in the quantum well is considered, including the pronounced band mixing effect. The scheme is self-contained and can be used to treat different semiclassical aspects of the microcavity properties. As an example, we analyze the "selection" rules for the exciton-cavity mode coupling for different excitons.
We propose a way to directly excite compact localized condensates in a nearly flat band of the exciton-polariton Lieb lattice by short Laguerre-Gaussian pulses and investigate the dynamics of these condensates in the presence of repulsive polariton-polariton interaction and distributed losses in the lattice. The evolution of a low-density compact polariton condensate shows fast Rabi oscillations between its excitonic and photonic components, with slow beatings of the Rabi oscillation amplitude. Both oscillations and beatings are suppressed at higher condensate densities due to polariton-polari…
We analyse nonequilibrium phase transitions in microcavity polariton condensates trapped in optically induced annular potentials. We develop an analytic model for annular optical traps, which gives an intuitive interpretation for recent experimental observations on the polariton spatial mode switching with variation of the trap size. In the vicinity of polariton lasing threshold we then develop a nonlinear mean-field model accounting for interactions and gain saturation, and identify several bifurcation scenarios leading to formation of high angular momentum quantum vortices. For experimentall…
We study experimentally the oscillations of a non stationary transient signal of a semiconductor microcavity with embedded InGaAs quantum wells. The oscillations occur as a result of quantum beats between the upper and lower polariton modes due to the strong exciton-photon coupling in the microcavity sample (Rabi oscillations). The registration of spectrally resolved signal has allowed for separate observation of oscillations at the eigenfrequencies of two polariton modes. Surprisingly, the observed oscillations measured at the lower and upper polariton modes have opposite phases. We demonstra…
The Rabi oscillations of a coupled spin-photon system are experimentally studied using time domain microwave transmission measurements. An external magnetic bias field is applied to control the amplitude and frequency of Rabi oscillations, which are a measure of the coherent spin-photon energy exchange and coupling strength respectively. The amplitude and frequency control is described in the time domain as the transient response of a two-level spin-photon system. This approach reveals the link between steady state and transient behaviour of the cavity-magnon-polariton, which is necessary to i…
We propose a physical mechanism which enables permanent Rabi oscillations in driven-dissipative condensates of exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities subjected to external magnetic fields. The method is based on incoherent excitonic reservoir engineering. We demonstrate that permanent non-decaying oscillations may appear due to the parity-time (PT) symmetry of the coupled exciton-photon system realised in a specific regime of pumping to the exciton state and depletion of the reservoir. For effective non-zero exciton-photon detuning, permanent Rabi oscillations occur with unequal amp…
We propose a cavity QED approach to describe light-matter interaction between an individual anharmonic molecular vibration and an infrared cavity field. Starting from a generic Morse oscillator with quantized nuclear motion, we derive a multi-level quantum Rabi model to study vibrational polaritons beyond the rotating-wave approximation. We analyze the spectrum of vibrational polaritons in detail and compare with available experiments. For high excitation energies, the spectrum exhibits a dense manifold of true and avoided level crossings as the light-matter coupling strength and cavity freque…
We study the propagation of non-interacting polariton wavepackets. We show how two qualitatively different concepts of mass that arise from the peculiar polariton dispersion lead to a new type of particle-like object from non-interacting fields---much like self-accelerating beams---shaped by the Rabi coupling out of Gaussian initial states. A divergence and change of sign of the diffusive mass results in a "mass wall" on which polariton wavepackets bounce back. Together with the Rabi dynamics, this yield propagation of ultrafast subpackets and ordering of a spacetime crystal.
We introduce and model spin-Rabi oscillations based on exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities. The phase and polarization of oscillations can be controlled by resonant coherent pulses and the propagation of oscillating domains gives rise to phase-dependent interference patterns in real space. We show that interbranch polariton-polariton scattering controls the propagation of oscillating domains, which can be used to realize logic gates based on an analogue variable phase.
We theoretically investigate the trion-polariton and the effects of a two-dimensional electron gas on its single particle properties. Focussing on the trion and exciton transitions, we set up an effective model and calculate the optical absorption of the quantum well containing the 2DEG. Including the light-matter coupling, we compute the Rabi splitting and polariton lineshapes as a function of 2DEG density. The role of finite temperature is investigated. The spatial extent of the trion-polariton is also calculated. We find a substantial charge build-up at short distances as long as the Rabi f…
We theoretically analyze exciton-photon oscillatory dynamics within a homogenous polariton gas in presence of energy detuning between the cavity and quantum well modes. Whereas pure Rabi oscillations consist of the particle exchange between the photon and excitons states in the polariton system without any oscillations of the phases of the two sub-condensates, we demonstrate that any non-zero detuning results in oscillations of the relative phase of the photon and exciton macroscopic wave functions. Different initial conditions reveal a variety of behaviors of the relative phase between the tw…
We investigate the microscopic description of exciton-polaritons that involves electrons, holes and photons within a two-dimensional microcavity. We show that in order to recover the simplified exciton-photon model that is typically used to describe polaritons, one must correctly define the exciton-photon detuning and exciton-photon (Rabi) coupling in terms of the bare microscopic parameters. For the case of unscreened Coulomb interactions, we find that the exciton-photon detuning is strongly shifted from its bare value in a manner akin to renormalization in quantum electrodynamics. Within the…
We propose theoretically and demonstrate experimentally a generation of light pulses whose polarization varies temporally to cover selected areas of the Poincaré sphere with tunable swirling speed and total duration (1 ps and 10 ps respectively in our implementation). The effect relies on the Rabi oscillations of two polarized fields in the strong coupling regime, excited by two counter-polarized and delayed pulses. The interferences of the oscillating fields result in the precession of the Stokes vector of the emitted light while polariton lifetime imbalance results in its drift from a circle…
We present a microscopic theory of the equilibrium polariton condensate state of a semiconductor quantum well in a planar optical cavity. The theory accounts for the adjustment of matter excitations to the presence of a coherent photon field, predicts effective polariton-polariton interaction strengths that are weaker and condensate exciton fractions that are smaller than in the commonly employed exciton-photon model, and yields effective Rabi coupling strengths that depend on the detuning of the cavity photon energy relative to the bare exciton energy. The dressed quasiparticle bands that app…
Helicity decoupling ultrastrong Rabi splitting from quantum vacuum dressing
College of Physical Sciences and Engineering, University Mohammed VI Polytechnic（物理科学与工程学院，穆罕默德六世polytechnic大学）；Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Tübingen（理论物理研究所，蒂宾根大学）；Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Forschungszentrum Jülich（于利希超级计算中心，于利希研究中心）；Department of Chemistry, Princeton University（化学系，普林斯顿大学）
We demonstrate strong light-matter interaction at ambient conditions between a ladder-type conjugated polymer and the individual modes of a vertical microcavity with tunable resonance frequencies. Zero-dimensional wavelength-scale confinement for the polaritons is achieved through a sub-micron sized Gaussian defect, resulting in a vacuum Rabi splitting of the polariton branches of 2g = 166 meV. By placing a second Gaussian defect nearby, we create a polaritonic molecule with tunnel coupling strength of up to 2J ~ 50 meV. This platform enables the creation of tailor-made potential landscapes wi…
Ultra strong coupling is studied in a modulation-doped parabolic potential well coupled to an inductance-capacitance resonant circuit. In this system, in accordance to Kohn's theorem, strong reduction of the energy level separation caused by the electron-electron interaction compensates the depolarization shift. As a result, a very large ratio of 27% of the Rabi frequency to the center resonance frequency as well as a polariton gap of width 2? ? 670GHz are observed, suggesting parabolic quantum wells as the system of choice in order to explore the ultra-strong coupling regime.
Semiclassical quantization rules and numerical calculations are applied to study polariton modes of materials whose permittivity tensor has principal values of opposite sign (so-called hyperbolic materials). The spectra of volume- and surface-confined polaritons are computed for spheroidal nanogranules of hexagonal boron nitride, a natural hyperbolic crystal. The field distribution created by polaritons excited by an external dipole source is predicted to exhibit ray-like patterns due to classical periodic orbits. Near-field infrared imaging and Purcell-factor measurements are suggested to tes…
We demonstrate control over light-matter coupling at room temperature combining a field effect transistor (FET) with a tuneable optical microcavity. Our microcavity FET comprises a monolayer tungsten disulfide WS$_2$ semiconductor which was transferred onto a hexagonal boron nitride flake that acts as a dielectric spacer in the microcavity, and as an electric insulator in the FET. In our tuneable system, strong coupling between excitons in the monolayer WS$_2$ and cavity photons can be tuned by controlling the cavity length, which we achieved with excellent stability, allowing us to choose fro…
Electrical control over the energy exchange between exciton states mediated by cavity-polaritons at room temperature is demonstrated. Spatially separated field effect transistors based on monolayers of WS$_2$ and MoS$_2$ are placed in a tuneable Fabry-Pérot microcavity. This device is specially designed for the formation of exciton-polaritons that combine the two exciton species and a tuneable cavity mode. It is further shown that the tuning of the free carrier density in the WS$_2$ film leads to a strong modulation of the Rabi splitting that modifies the excitonic and photonic nature of excit…
Until now, the generation of an excitonic reservoir in a cavity polariton system under quasi-resonant pumping has always been neglected. We show that in microcavities having a small Rabi splitting (typically GaAs cavities with a single quantum well), this reservoir can be efficiently populated by polariton-phonon scattering. We consider the influence of the exciton reservoir on the energy shifts of the resonantly pumped polariton modes. We show that the presence of this reservoir effectively reduces the spin anisotropy of the polariton-polariton interaction, in agreement with recent experiment…
Two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides exhibit strong optical transitions with significant potential for optoelectronic devices. In particular they are suited for cavity quantum electrodynamics in which strong coupling leads to polariton formation as a root to realisation of inversionless lasing, polariton condensationand superfluidity. Demonstrations of such strongly correlated phenomena to date have often relied on cryogenic temperatures, high excitation densities and were frequently impaired by strong material disorder. At room-temperature, experiments approaching the strong coupl…
Strongly coupled organic systems are characterized by unusually large Rabi splittings, even in the vacuum state. They show the counter-intuitive feature of a lifetime of the lower polariton state longer than for all other excited states. Here we build up a new theoretical framework to understand the dynamics of such coupled system. In particular, we show that the non-Markovian character of the relaxation of the dressed organic system explains the long lifetime of the lower polariton state.
Electronic resonances can significantly enhance the photon-phonon coupling in cavity optomechanics, but are normally avoided due to absorption losses and dephasing by inhomogeneous broadening. We experimentally demonstrate that exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities enable GHz optomechanics with single-particle resonant couplings reaching record values in the 10s of MHz range. Moreover, this resonant enhancement is protected from inhomogeneous broadening by the Rabi gap. Single-polariton non-linearities and the optomechanical strong-coupling regime become accessible in this platform…
Delayed Formation of Landau Polaritons in Phase-Resolved THz Spectroscopy
Centera Labs, Institute of High Pressure Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences（波兰科学院高压物理研究所）；Centera, Cezamat, Warsaw University of Technology（华沙理工大学）；Weitzman Institute of Science（魏茨曼科学研究所）；Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw（华沙大学物理学院）
We apply the Picard and Magnus expansions to both the semiclassical and the quantum Rabi model, with a switchable matter-field coupling. The case of the quantum Rabi model ia a paradigmatic example of finite-time quantum electrodynamics (QED), and in this case we build an intuitive diagrammatic representation of the Picard series. In particular, we show that regular oscillations in the mean number of photons, ascribed to the dynamical Casimir effect (DCE) for the the generation of photons and to the anti-DCE for their destruction, take place at twice the resonator frequency $ω$. Such oscillati…
We present a new method to study the semiclassical dynamics of the Jaynes-Cummings dimer model, describing two coupled cavities each containing a two-level system (qubit). We develop a Fock space WKB approach in the polariton basis where each site is treated exactly while the intersite polariton hopping is treated semiclassically. We show that the self-trapped states can be viewed as Fock space localized states. We find that this picture yields the correct critical value of interaction strength at which the delocalization-localization transition occurs. Moreover, the validity of our WKB approa…
We describe photonic crystal microcavities with very strong light-matter interaction to realize room-temperature, equilibrium, exciton-polariton Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). This is achieved through a careful balance between strong light-trapping in a photonic band gap (PBG) and large exciton density enabled by a multiple quantum-well (QW) structure with moderate dielectric constant. This enables the formation of long-lived, dense 10~$μ$m - 1~cm scale cloud of exciton-polaritons with vacuum Rabi splitting (VRS) that is roughly 7\% of the bare exciton recombination energy. We introduce a w…
Controlling light-matter interactions in solid-state systems has motivated intense research to produce bosonic quasi-particles known as exciton-polaritons, which requires strong coupling between excitons and cavity photons. Ultra-low threshold coherent light emitters can be achieved through lasing from exciton-polariton condensates, but this generally requires sophisticated device structures and cryogenic temperatures. Polaritonic nanolasers operating at room temperature lie on the crucial path of related research, not only for the exploration of polariton physics at the nanoscale but also for…
Two dimensional (2D) semiconductor materials of transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) manifest many peculiar physical phenomena in the light-matter interaction. Due to their ultrathin property, strong interaction with light and the robust excitons at room temperature, they provide a perfect platform for studying the physics of strong coupling in low dimension and at room temperature. Here we report the strong coupling between 2D semiconductor excitons and Tamm plasmon polaritons (TPPs). We observe a Rabi splitting of about 54 meV at room temperature by measuring the angle resolved different…
The nonlinear optical response of organic polaritonic matter has received increasing attention due to their enhanced and controllable nonlinear response and their potential for novel optical devices such as compact photon sources and optical and quantum information devices. Using z-scans at different wavelengths and incident powers we have studied the nonlinear optical dispersion of ultrastrongly coupled organic cavity polaritons near the lower polariton band. We show that the up to 150-fold enhancement of the nonlinear response compared to a cavity-less organic film arises from an intensity-d…
The dynamics of arbitrary-order quantum correlations in a cavity magnon-polariton system are investigated based on the quantum master equation in the coherent state representation. The phenomena of Rabi-like oscillation and level repulsion of the average cavity-photon number agree remarkably well with existing experimental observations. The competing nature of coherent and incoherent components in these two cases is further revealed by the second-order quantum coherence of the cavity photons and magnons, which can be systematically tuned by the driving microwave and thermal bath. Our results d…
Hybrid halide perovskites are now considered as low-cost materials for contemporary research in photovoltaics and nanophotonics. In particular, because these materials can be solution processed, they represent a great hope for obtaining low-cost devices. While the potential of 2D layered hybrid perovskites for polaritonic devices operating at room temperature has been demonstrated in the past, the potential of the 3D perovskites has been much less explored for this particular application. Here, we report the strong exciton-photon coupling with 3D bromide hybrid perovskite. Cavity polaritons ar…
Optically controlled coherent dynamics of charge (excitonic) degrees of freedom in a semiconductor quantum dot under the influence of lattice dynamics (phonons) is discussed theoretically. We show that the dynamics of the lattice response in the strongly non-linear regime is governed by a semiclassical resonance between the phonon modes and the optically driven dynamics. We stress on the importance of the stability of intermediate states for the truly coherent control.
We study the elastic response of a stationarily driven system of a cavity field strongly coupled with molecular excitons, taking into account the main dissipation channels due to the finite cavity linewidth and molecular vibrations. We show that the frequently used coupled oscillator model fails in describing this response especially due to the non-Lorentzian dissipation of the molecules to their vibrations. Signatures of this failure are the temperature dependent minimum point of the polariton peak splitting, uneven polariton peak height at the minimum splitting, and the asymmetric shape of t…
The nature of trions and their interaction with light has remained a puzzle. The composition and dispersion of polaritons involving trions provide insights into this puzzle. Trions and excitons in doped two-dimensional (2D) materials are not independent excitations but are strongly coupled as a result of Coulomb interactions. When excitons in doped 2D materials are also strongly coupled with light inside an optical waveguide, the resulting polariton states are coherent superpositions of exciton, trion, and photon states. We realize these exciton-trion-polaritons by coupling an electron-doped m…
The Rabi model considers a two-level system (or spin-1/2) coupled to a quantized harmonic oscillator and describes the simplest interaction between matter and light. The recent experimental progress in solid-state circuit quantum electrodynamics has engendered theoretical efforts to quantitatively describe the mathematical and physical aspects of the light-matter interaction beyond the rotating wave approximation. We develop a stochastic Schrödinger equation approach which enables us to access the strong-coupling limit of the Rabi model and study the effects of dissipation, and AC drive in an …
Cavity quantum electrodynamics advances the coherent control of a single quantum emitter with a quantized radiation field mode, typically piecewise engineered for the highest finesse and confinement in the cavity field. This enables the possibility of strong coupling for chip-scale quantum processing, but till now is limited to few research groups that can achieve the precision and deterministic requirements for these polariton states. Here we observe for the first time coherent polariton states of strong coupled single quantum dot excitons in inherently disordered one-dimensional localized mo…
Depending on the relative rates of coupling and dissipation, a light-matter coupled system is either in the weak- or strong-coupling regime. Here, we present a unique system where the coupling rate continuously increases with an externally applied magnetic field while the dissipation rate remains constant, allowing us to monitor a weak-to-strong coupling transition as a function of magnetic field. We observed a Rabi splitting of a terahertz magnon mode in yttrium orthoferrite above a threshold magnetic field of ~14 T. Based on a microscopic theoretical model, we show that with increasing magne…
Light-matter coupling in van der Waal's materials holds significant promise in realizing Bosonic condensation and superfluidity. The underlying semiconductor's crystal asymmetry, if any, can be utilized to form anisotropic half-light half-matter quasiparticles. We demonstrate generation of such highly anisotropic exciton-polaritons at the interface of a biaxial layered semiconductor, stacked on top of a distributed Bragg reflector. The spatially confined photonic mode in this geometry couples with polarized excitons and their Rydberg states, creating a system of highly anisotropic polariton ma…
The energy spectrum of the 2D cavity magnetoexciton-polaritons has been investigated previously, using exact solutions for the Landau quantization of conduction electrons and heavy holes provided by the Rashba method [1]. Two lowest Landau quantization levels for electrons and three lowest Landau levels for heavy-holes, lead to the construction of the six lowest magnetoexciton sates. They consist of two dipole-active, two quadrupole-active, and the two forbidden quantum transitions from the ground state of the crystal to the magnetoexciton states. The interaction of the four optical-active mag…
Under vibrational strong coupling (VSC), the formation of molecular polaritons may significantly modify the photo-induced or thermal properties of molecules. In an effort to understand these intriguing modifications, both experimental and theoretical studies have focused on the ultrafast dynamics of vibrational polaritons. Here, following our recent work [J. Chem. Phys., 154, 094124, (2021)], we systematically study the mechanism of polariton relaxation for liquid CO2 under a weak external pumping. Classical cavity molecular dynamics (CavMD) simulations show that polariton relaxation results f…
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…
