Quantum effects of fields on curved spacetimes may be studied in the laboratory thanks to quantum fluids. Here we use a polariton fluid to study the Hawking effect, the correlated emission from the quantum vacuum at the acoustic horizon. We show how out-of-equilibrium physics affects the dispersion relation, and hence the emission and propagation of correlated waves: the fluid properties on either side of the horizon are critical to observing the Hawking effect. We find that emission may be optimised by supporting the phase and density of the fluid upstream of the horizon in a regime of optical bistability. This opens new avenues for the observation of the Hawking effect in out-of-equilibrium systems as well as for the study of new phenomenology of fields on curved spacetimes.
We report the formation of a macroscopic coherent state emerging from colliding polariton fluids. Four lasers with random relative phases, arranged in a square, pump resonantly a planar microcavity, creating four coherent polariton fluids propagating toward each other. When the density (interactions) increases, the four fluids synchronise and the topological excitations (vortex or soliton) disappear to form a single superfluid.
In this work, we implement a new experimental configuration which exploits the specific properties of the optical bistability exhibited by the polariton system and we demonstrate the generation of a superfluid turbulent flow in the wake of a potential barrier. The propagation and direction of the turbulent flow are sustained by a support beam on distances an order of magnitude longer than previously reported. This novel technique is a powerful tool for the controlled generation and propagation of quantum turbulences and paves the way to the study of the hydrodynamic of quantum turbulence in dr…
The general theory of dark solitons relies on repulsive interactions and therefore predicts the impossibility to form dark-soliton bound states. One important exception to this prediction is the observation of bound solitons in non-local nonlinear media. Here, we report that exciton-polariton superfluids can also sustain dark-soliton molecules although the interactions are fully local. With a novel all optical technique, we create two dark solitons and bind them to each other to form an unconventional dark-soliton molecule. We demonstrate that the stability of this structure and the separation…
In resonantly pumped polariton superfluids we recently explored a new regime based on the bistability of the polariton system to enhance the propagation of polariton fluids up to macroscopic distances. This technique together with an all-optical imprinting method allowed the generation and control of various topological excitations such as quantized vortices and dark solitons. The flexibility and scalability of the new experimental scheme opens the way to the systematic study of quantum turbulence in driven dissipative quantum fluids of light. In this article we review the basic working princi…
We report the experimental investigation and theoretical modeling of a rotating polariton superfluid relying on an innovative method for the injection of angular momentum. This novel, multi-pump injection method uses four coherent lasers arranged in a square, resonantly creating four polariton populations propagating inwards. The control available over the direction of propagation of the superflows allows injecting a controllable non-quantized amount of optical angular momentum. When the density at the center is low enough to neglect polariton-polariton interactions, optical singularities, ass…
We propose the superfluid to Mott-insulator quantum phase transition in an array of exciton-polariton traps can be utilized for massive parallel generation of indistinguishable single photons. By means of analytical and numerical methods, the device operations and system properties are studied using realistic experimental parameters. Such a deterministic, fault-tolerant, massive parallel generation may open up a new perspective in photonic quantum information processing.
Collective excitations, such as vortex-antivortex and dark solitons, are among the most fascinating effects of macroscopic quantum states. However, 2D dark solitons are unstable and collapse into vortices due to snake instabilities. Making use of the optical bistability in exciton-polariton microcavities, we demonstrate that a pair of dark solitons can be formed in the wake of an obstacle in a polariton flow resonantly supported by a homogeneous laser beam. Unlike the purely dissipative case where the solitons are grey and spatially separate, here the two solitons are fully dark, rapidly align…
We report the formation of a ring-shaped array of vortices after injection of angular momentum in a polariton superfluid. The angular momentum is injected by a $\ell= 8$ Laguerre-Gauss beam, whereas the global rotation of the fluid is hindered by a narrow Gaussian beam placed at its center. In the linear regime a spiral interference pattern containing phase defects is visible. In the nonlinear (superfluid) regime, the interference disappears and the vortices nucleate as a consequence of the angular momentum quantization. The radial position of the vortices evolves freely in the region between …
The Andreev-Bashkin effect, or superfluid drag, is predicted in a system of Bose-condensed excitonic polaritons in optical microcavity coupled by electron-exciton interaction with a superconducting layer. Two possible setups with spatially indirect dipole excitons or direct excitons are considered. The drag density characterizing a magnitude of this effect is found by many-body calculations with taking into account dynamical screening of electron-exciton interaction. For the superconducting electronic layer, we assume the recently proposed polaritonic mechanism of Cooper pairing, although the …
We analyze the quantum phase transition-like behavior in the lowest energy state of a two-site coupled atom-cavity system, where each cavity contains one atom but the total excitation number is not limited to two. Utilizing the variance of the total excitation number to distinguish the insulator and superfluid states, and the variance of the atomic excitation number to identify the polaritonic characteristics of these states, we find that the total excitation number plays a significant role in the lowest-energy-state phase transitions. In both the small hopping regime and the small atom-field …
We study the quantum hydrodynamical features of exciton-polaritons flowing circularly in a ring-shaped geometry. We consider a resonant-excitation scheme in which the spinor polariton fluid is set into motion in both components by spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion. We show that this scheme allows to control the winding number of the fluid, and to create two circulating states differing by two units of the angular momentum. We then consider the effect of a disorder potential, which is always present in realistic nanostructures. We show that a smooth disorder is efficiently screened by…
Polariton Fluids as Quantum Field Theory Simulators on Tailored Curved Spacetimes
Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, ENS-Université PSL, Collège de France（卡斯勒-布罗塞尔实验室，索邦大学，法国国家科学研究中心，巴黎高等师范学院-巴黎文理研究大学，法兰西公学院）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, Louisiana State University（路易斯安那州立大学物理与天文系）
Spectral properties of the Bose-Hubbard model and a recently proposed coupled-cavity model are studied by means of quantum Monte Carlo simulations in one dimension. Both models exhibit a quantum phase transition from a Mott insulator to a superfluid phase. The dynamic structure factor $S(k,ω)$ and the single-particle spectrum $A(k,ω)$ are calculated, focusing on the parameter region around the phase transition from the Mott insulator with density one to the superfluid phase, where correlations are important. The strongly interacting nature of the superfluid phase manifests itself in terms of a…
We propose to detect the Mott insulator-superfluid quantum phase transition in an array of coupled cavities by studying the polariton and photon fluctuations in a block of linear dimension M (in units of the lattice constant of the array). We explicitly show this for a one-dimensional array; the analysis can be however extended to higher dimensions. In the Mott phase polariton fluctuations are independent of the block size. In the superfluid phase they grow logarithmically with M, the prefactor being related to the compressibility of the system. In the case of photon fluctuations, the critical…
Analogue gravity enables the study of fields on curved spacetimes in the laboratory. There are numerous experimental platforms in which amplification at the event horizon or the ergoregion has been observed. Here, we demonstrate how optically generating a defect in a polariton microcavity enables the creation of one- and two-dimensional, transsonic fluid flows. We show that this highly tuneable method permits the creation of sonic horizons. Furthermore, we present a rotating geometry akin to the water-wave bathtub vortex. These experiments usher-in the possibility of observing stimulated as we…
We propose a practical scheme to observe the polaritonic quantum phase transition (QPT) from the superfluid (SF) to Bose-glass (BG) to Mott-insulator (MI) states. The system consists of a two-dimensional array of photonic crystal microcavities doped with substitutional donor/acceptor impurities. Using realistic parameters, we show that such strongly correlated polaritonic systems can be constructed using the state-of-art semiconductor technology.
We propose a new type of spatially periodic structure, i.e. polaritonic crystal (PolC), to observe a "slow"/"stopped" light phenomenon due to coupled atom-field states (polaritons) in a lattice. Under the tightbinding approximation, such a system realizes an array of weakly coupled trapped two-component atomic ensembles interacting with optical field in a tunnel-coupled one dimensional cavity array. We have shown that the phase transition to the superfluid Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer state, a so-called (BCS)-type state of low branch polaritons, occurs under the strong coupling condition. Such a …
In recent years, a rigorous quantum mechanical model for the interaction between light and macroscopic dispersive, lossy dielectrics has emerged -macroscopic QED- allowing the application of the usual methods of quantum field theory. Here, we apply time dependent perturbation theory to a general class of problems involving time dependent lossy, dispersive dielectrics. The model is used to derive polariton excitation rates in three illustrative cases, including that of a travelling Gaussian perturbation to the susceptibility of an otherwise infinite homogeneous dielectric, motivated by recent e…
Exciton-polaritons are hybrid elementary excitations of light and matter that, thanks to their nonlinear properties, enable a plethora of physical phenomena ranging from room temperature condensation to superfluidity. While polaritons are usually exploited in high density regime, evidence of quantum correlations at the level of few excitations has been recently reported, thus suggesting the possibility of using these systems for quantum information purposes. Here we show that integrated circuits of propagating single polaritons can be arranged to build deterministic quantum logic gates in whic…
A generalisation of the Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard model for coupled-cavity arrays is introduced, where the embedded two-level system in each cavity is replaced by a $Ξ$-type three-level system. We demonstrate that the resulting effective polariton-polariton interactions at each site are both two-body and three-body. By tuning the ratio of the two transition dipole matrix elements, we show that the strength and sign of the two-body interaction can be controlled whilst maintaining a three-body repulsion. We then proceed to demonstrate how different two-body and three-body interactions alter the me…
Controlling light-matter based quantum systems in the strong coupling regime allows for exploring quantum simulation of many-body physics in nowadays architectures. For instance, the atom-field interaction in a cavity QED network provides control and scalability for quantum information processing. Here, we propose the control of single- and two-body Jaynes-Cummings systems in a non-equilibrium scenario, which allows us to establish conditions for the coherent and incoherent interchange of polariton branches. Our findings provide a systematic approach to manipulate polaritons interchange, that …
We discuss the Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard model (JCHM) describing the superfluid-Mott insulator transition of polaritons (i.e., dressed photon-qubit states) in coupled qubit-cavity arrays in the crossover from strong to weak correlations. In the strongly correlated regime the phase diagram and the elementary excitations of lattice polaritons near the Mott lobes are calculated analytically using a slave boson theory (SBT). The opposite regime of weakly interacting polariton superfluids is described by a weak-coupling mean-field theory (MFT) for a generalised multi-mode Dicke model. We show that a …
Light-matter systems allow to realize a strongly correlated phase where photons are present. In these systems strong correlations are achieved by optical nonlinearities, which appear due to the coupling of photons to atomic-like structures. This leads to intriguing effects, such as the quantum phase transition from the Mott to the superfluid phase. Here, we address the two-dimensional Jaynes-Cummings lattice model. We evaluate the boundary of the quantum phase transition and study polaritonic properties. In order to be able to characterize polaritons, we investigate the spectral properties of …
Polaritons are quasi-particles originating from the coupling of light with matter that demonstrated quantum phenomena at the many-particle mesoscopic level, such as BEC and superfluidity. A highly sought and long-time missing feature of polaritons is a genuine quantum manifestation of their dynamics at the single-particle level. Although they are conceptually perceived as entangled states and theoretical proposals abound for an explicit manifestation of their single-particle properties, so far their behaviour has remained fully accountable for by classical and mean-field theories. In this Arti…
We devise a phase-coherent three-pulse protocol to probe the polariton dynamics in a trapped-ion quantum simulation. In contrast to conventional nonlinear signals, the presented scheme does not change the number of excitations in the system, allowing for the investigation of the dynamics within an $N$-excitation manifold. In the particular case of a filling factor one ($N$ excitations in an $N$-ion chain), the proposed interaction induces coherent transitions between a delocalized phonon superfluid and a localized atomic insulator phase. Numerical simulations of a two-ion chain demonstrate tha…
Exciton-polaritons are hybrid light-matter excitations arising from the non-perturbative coupling of a photonic mode and an excitonic resonance. Behaving as interacting photons, they show optical third-order nonlinearities providing effects such as optical parametric oscillation or amplification. It has been suggested that polariton-polariton interactions can be greatly enhanced by inducing aligned electric dipoles in their excitonic part. However direct evidence of a true particle-particle interaction, such as superfluidity or parametric scattering is still missing. In this work, we demonstra…
Cavity-polaritons in semiconductor microstructures have emerged as a promising system for exploring nonequilibrium dynamics of many-body systems. Key advances in this field, including the observation of polariton condensation, superfluidity, realization of topological photonic bands, and dissipative phase transitions, generically allow for a description based on a mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii formalism. While observation of polariton intensity squeezing and decoherence of a polarization entangled photon pair by a polariton condensate provide counter-examples, quantum effects in these experiment…
The Higgs amplitude mode is a collective excitation studied and observed in a broad class of matter, including superconductors, charge density waves, antiferromagnets, 3He p-wave superfluid, and ultracold atomic condensates. In all the observations reported thus far, the amplitude mode was excited by perturbing the condensate out of equilibrium. Studying an exciton-polariton condensate, here we report the first observation of this mode purely driven by intrinsic quantum fluctuations without such perturbations. By using an ultrahigh quality microcavity and a Raman spectrometer to maximally reje…
We study the response of a thermal state of the Hubbard-like system to either global or local non-Hermitian perturbation, which coalesces the degenerate ground state within the $U(1)$ symmetry breaking phase. We show that the dynamical response of the system is strongly sensitive to the underlying quantum phase transition (QPT) from a Mott insulator to a superfluid state. The Uhlmann fidelity in the superfluid phase decays to a steady value determined by the order of the exceptional point (EP) within the subspace spanned by the degenerate ground states but remains almost unchanged in the Mott …
