We explore that two ferromagnetic insulator slabs host a strong twist-induced near-field radiative heat transfer in the presence of twisted magnetic fields. Using the formalism of fluctuational electrodynamics, we find the existence of large twist-induced thermal switch ratio in large damping condition and nonmonotonic twist manipulation for heat transfer in small damping condition, associated with the different twist-induced effects of nonreciprocal elliptic surface magnon-polaritons, hyperbolic surface magnon-polaritons, and twist-non-resonant surface magnon-polaritons. Moreover, the near-field radiative heat transfer can be significantly enhanced by the twist-non-resonant surface magnon-polaritons in the ultra-small damping condition. Such twist-induced effect is applicable for other kinds of anisotropic slabs with timereversal symmetry breaking. Our findings provide a way to twisted and magnetic control in nanoscale thermal management and improve it with twistronics concepts.
We investigate spontaneous entanglement of two qubits mediated by nonreciprocal surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) in a Weyl semimetal. In the absence of external magnetic fields, the topology of the Weyl semimetal even gives rise to nonreciprocal SPPs that are topologically protected and reside inside the photonic gap. We utilize this nonreciprocal SPP as a mediator of entanglement of two spatially-separated qubits. Our two main findings are: (1) the nonreciprocal SPP gives better quantum entanglement than the reciprocal one, and (2) the achieved entanglement is sufficiently long-lived compare…
Drift-Induced Nonreciprocal Hyperbolic Polaritons in Graphene/$α$-MoO$_3$ Heterostructures
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid（马德里理工大学）；Instituto de Sistemas Optoelectrónicos y Microtecnología, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid（马德里理工大学光电子与微技术研究所）；Departamento de Ingeniería Electrónica, E.T.S.I de Telecomunicación, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid（马德里理工大学电信工程学院电子工程系）
Surface plasmon polaritons in a strained slab of a Weyl semimetal with broken time-reversal symmetry are investigated. It is found that the strain-induced axial gauge field reduces frequencies of these collective modes for intermediate values of the wave vector. Depending on the relative orientation of the separation of Weyl nodes in momentum space, the surface normal, and the direction of propagation, the dispersion relation of surface plasmon polaritons could be nonreciprocal even in a thin slab. In addition, strain-induced axial gauge fields can significantly affect the localization propert…
In a proposed book chapter surface plasmon polariton assisted optical switching in noble metal nanoparticle systems is discussed in the sub-band gap formalism.
To violate Kirchhoff s law is very important in the areas of thermal radiation. However, due to the weak nonreciprocity in natural materials, it is necessary to engineer novel structures to break the balance between emission and absorption. In this work, we introduce magneto-optical material into Fibonacci photonic crystals. Assisted by the nonreciprocity of the magneto-optical material and the excitation of Tamm plasmon polaritons, strong nonreciprocal thermal radiation can be realized. The difference between absorption and emission at wavelength of 16 μm can reach 0.9 at the incident angle o…
In this Rapid Communication, we theoretically demonstrate that near-field radiative heat transfer (NFRHT) can be modulated and enhanced by a new energy transmission mode of evanescent wave, i.e. the nonreciprocal surface plasmons polaritons (NSPPs). In addition to the well-known coupled surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), applying a drift current on a graphene sheet leads to an extremely asymmetric photonic transmission model, which has never been noted in the noncontact heat exchanges at nanoscale before. The coupling of plasmons in the infrared bands dominates the NFRHT, associated with low l…
A graphene sheet gated with a ridged ground plane, creating a soft-boundary (SB) graphene nanoribbon, is considered. By adjusting the ridge parameters and bias voltage a channel can be created on the graphene which can guide TM surface plasmon polaritons (SPP). Two types of modes are found; fundemental and higher-order modes with no apparent cutoff frequency and with energy distributed over the created channel, and edge modes with energy concen-trated at the soft-boundary edge. Dispersion curves, electric near-field patterns, and current distributions of these modes are determined. Since the l…
Integration of optical elements into scalable chips has been at the center of a large effort in recent years. Concurrently, the separation between the diverse functions, namely switches, detectors or emitters increases significantly the final number of components on chip. Such technical limitations may be overcome by introducing agile devices able, for example, to simultaneously detect, process and emit a coherent signal. Such a pathway has been explored with different approaches that bear advantages and drawbacks. Polaritons have often been proposed as promising candidates for multifunctional…
Integrated electro-optical switches are essential as one of the fundamental elements in the development of modern optoelectronics. As an architecture for photonic systems, exciton polaritons, that are hybrid bosonic quasiparticles that possess unique properties derived from both excitons and photons, have shown much promise. For this system, we demonstrate a significant improvement of emitted intensity and condensation threshold by applying an electric field to a microcavity filled with an organic microbelt. Our theoretical investigations indicate that the electric field makes the excitons dip…
We show that an isotropic dipolar particle in the vicinity of a substrate made of nonreciprocal plasmonic materials can experience a lateral Casimir force and torque when the particle's temperature differs from that of the slab and the environment. We connect the existence of the lateral force to the asymmetric dispersion of nonreciprocal surface polaritons and the existence of the lateral torque to the spin-momentum locking of such surface waves. Using the formalism of fluctuational electrodynamics, we show that the features of lateral force and torque should be experimentally observable usin…
We investigate the cross-interactions in a two-component polariton quantum fluid coherently driven by two independent pumping lasers tuned at different energies and momenta. We show that both the hysteresis cycles and the ON/OFF threshold of one polariton signal can be entirely controlled by a second polariton fluid. Furthermore, we study the ultrafast switching dynamics of a driven polariton state, demonstrating the ability to control the polariton population with an external laser pulse, in less than a few picoseconds.
Based on the studies of propagation of an exciton-polariton condensate in a patterned optical microcavity with an embedded graphene layer, we propose a design of a Y-shaped electrically-controlled optical switch. The polaritons are driven by a time-independent force due to the microcavity wedge shape and by a time-dependent drag force owing to the interaction of excitons in graphene and the electric current running in a neighboring quantum well. It is demonstrated that one can control the polariton flow direction by changing the direction of the electric current. The simulations also show that…
We present a time-resolved study of the logical operation of a polariton condensate transistor switch. Creating a polariton condensate (source) in a GaAs ridge-shaped microcavity with a non-resonant pulsed laser beam, the polariton propagation towards a collector, at the ridge edge, is controlled by a second weak pulse (gate), located between the source and the collector. The experimental results are interpreted in the light of simulations based on the generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation, including incoherent pumping, decay and energy relaxation within the condensate.
The interplay of spin angular momentum and thermal radiation is a frontier area of interest to nanophotonics as well as topological physics. Here, we show that a thick planar slab of a nonreciprocal material, despite being at thermal equilibrium with its environment, can exhibit nonzero photon spin angular momentum and nonzero radiative heat flux in its vicinity. We identify them as the persistent thermal photon spin (PTPS) and the persistent planar heat current (PPHC) respectively. With a practical example system, we reveal that the fundamental origin of these phenomena is connected to spin-m…
We study the radiative heat flux between two nanoparticles in close vicinity to the natural hyperbolic material hBN with its optical axis oriented parallel to the interface. We show that the heat flux between the nanoparticles can be efficiently modulated when rotating the nanoparticles due to the coupling to the highly directional hyperbolic surface modes in hBN. Finally, we discuss the thickness and distance dependence of this effect.
The equality between the spectral, directional emittance and absorptance of an object under local thermal equilibrium is known as Kirchhoff's law of radiation. The breakdown of Kirchhoff's law of radiation is physically allowed by breaking time reversal symmetry and can open opportunities for nonreciprocal light emitters and absorbers. Large anomalous Hall conductivity and angle recently observed in topological Weyl semimetals, particularly type-I magnetic Weyl semimetals and type-II Weyl semimetals, are expected to create large nonreciprocal electromagnetic wave propagation. In this work, we …
The requirement for optical-electrical-optical conversion of signals in optical technologies is often one of the majors bottleneck in terms of speed and energy consumption. The use of dressed photons (also called polaritons), that allows for intrinsic sizable interactions, could significantly improve the performances of optical integrated elements such as switches or optical gates. In this work we demonstrate the ultrafast switch of a laser coupled into a polaritonic waveguide triggered by an optical pulse resonant with the same dispersion but at a lower energy. Our experiments show two effect…
It is shown that one can explore the optical conductivity of graphene, together with the ability of controlling its electronic density by an applied gate voltage, in order to achieve resonant coupling between an external electromagnetic radiation and surface plasmon-polaritons in the graphene layer. This opens the possibility of electrical control of the intensity of light reflected inside a prism placed on top of the graphene layer, by switching between the regimes of total reflection and total absorption. The predicted effect can be used to build graphene-based opto-electronic switches.
We present a detailed theoretical study of transverse exciton-polariton patterns in semiconductor quantum-well microcavities. These patterns are initiated by directional instabilities in the uniform pump-generated polariton field and are measured as optical patterns in a transverse plane in the far field. Based on a microscopic many-particle theory, we investigate the spatio-temporal dynamics of the formation, selection, and optical control of these patterns. An emphasis is placed on a previously proposed low-intensity, all-optical switching scheme designed to exploit these instability-driven …
Microcavity exciton polaritons are promising candidates to build a new generation of highly nonlinear and integrated optoelectronic devices. Such devices range from novel coherent light emitters to reconfigurable potential landscapes for electro-optical polariton-lattice based quantum simulators as well as building blocks of optical logic architectures. Especially for the latter, the strongly interacting nature of the light-matter hybrid particles has been used to facilitate fast and efficient switching of light by light, something which is very hard to achieve with weakly interacting photons.…
Spin transitions are studied theoretically and experimentally in a resonantly excited system of cavity polaritons in a magnetic field. Weak pair interactions in this boson system make possible fast and massive spin flips occurring at critical amplitudes due to the interplay between amplitude dependent shifts of eigenstates and the Zeeman splitting. Dominant spin of a condensate can be toggled forth and back by tuning of the pump intensity only, which opens the way for ultra-fast spin switchings of polariton condensates on a picosecond timescale.
Polaritons are hybrid light-matter quasi-particles that have gathered a significant attention for their capability to show room temperature and out-of-equilibrium Bose-Einstein condensation. More recently, a novel class of ultrafast optical devices have been realized by using flows of polariton fluids, such as switches, interferometers and logical gates. However, polariton lifetimes and propagation distance are strongly limited by photon losses and accessible in-plane momenta in usual microcavity samples. In this work, we show experimental evidence of the formation of room temperature propagat…
The possibility of hybridizing collective electronic motion with mid-infrared (mid-IR) light to form surface polaritons has made van der Waals layered materials a versatile platform for extreme light confinement and tailored nanophotonics. Graphene and its heterostructures have attracted particular attention because the absence of an energy gap allows for plasmon polaritons to be continuously tuned. Here, we introduce black phosphorus (BP) as a promising new material in surface polaritonics that features key advantages for ultrafast switching. Unlike graphene, BP is a van der Waals bonded semi…
Weyl semimetals have recently attracted extensive attention due to their anomalous band structure manifested by topological properties that lead to some unusual and unique physical properties. We investigate novel features of surface plasmon polaritons in a slot waveguide comprised from two semi-infinite Weyl semimetals. We consider symmetric Voigt-Voigt and Faraday-Faraday configurations for plasmon polaritons in two interfaces of waveguide and show that the resulting dispersion is symmetric and the propagation of surface plasmon polaritons is bidirectional. We introduce exotic and novel asym…
We consider theoretically surface plasmon polaritons in Weyl semimetals. These materials contain pairs of band touching points - Weyl nodes - with a chiral topological charge, which induces an optical anisotropy and anomalous transport through the chiral anomaly. We show that these effects, which are not present in ordinary metals, have a direct fundamental manifestation in the surface plasmon dispersion. The retarded Weyl surface plasmon dispersion depends on the separation of the Weyl nodes in energy and momentum space. For Weyl semimetals with broken time-reversal symmetry, the distance bet…
We investigate theoretically the effect of a magnetic field on intersubband polaritons in an asymmetric quantum well placed inside an optical resonator. It is demonstrated that the field-induced diamagnetic shift of electron subbands in the well increases the broadening of optical lines corresponding to intersubband electron transitions. As a consequence, the magnetic field can switch the polariton system from the regime of strong light-matter coupling to the regime of weak one. This effect paves a way to the effective control of polaritonic devices with a magnetic field.
Artificial magnetic fields are revolutionizing our ability to manipulate neutral particles, by enabling the emulation of exotic phenomena once thought to be exclusive to charged particles. In particular, pseudo-magnetic fields generated by nonuniform strain in artificial lattices have attracted considerable interest because of their simple geometrical origin. However, to date, these strain-induced pseudo-magnetic fields have failed to emulate the tunability of real magnetic fields because they are dictated solely by the strain configuration. Here, we overcome this apparent limitation for polar…
We demonstrate an efficient switching between strong and weak exciton-photon coupling regimes in microcavity-embedded asymmetric double quantum wells, controlled by an applied electric field. We show that a fine tuning of the electric field leads to drastic changes in the polariton properties, with the polariton ground state being red-shifted by a few meV and having acquired prominent features of a spatially indirect dipolar exciton. We study the properties of dipolar exciton polaritons, called dipolaritons, on a microscopic level and show that, unlike recent findings, they are not dark polari…
A laser pulse, several meV red-detuned from the excitonic line of a quantum well, has been shown to induce an almost instantaneous and rigid shift of the lower and upper polariton branches. Here we demonstrate that through this shift, ultra-fast all-optical control of the polariton population in a semiconductor microcavity should be achievable. In the proposed setup a Stark field is used to bring the lower polariton branch in or out of resonance with a quasi-resonant continuous-wave laser, thereby favoring or inhibiting the injection of polaritons into the cavity. Moreover we show that this te…
The pseudospin dynamics of long-living exciton-polaritons in a wedged 2D cavity has been studied theoretically accounting for the external magnetic field effect. The cavity width variation plays the role of the artificial gravitational force acting on a massive particle: exciton-polariton. A semi-classical model of the spin-polarization dynamics of ballistically propagating exciton-polaritons has been developed. It has been shown that for the specific choise of the magnetic field magnitude and the initial polariton wave vector the polariton polarization vector tends to an attractor on the Poin…
