1,356 research outputs found
Engineering spin-orbit coupling for photons and polaritons in microstructures
One of the most fundamental properties of electromagnetism and special
relativity is the coupling between the spin of an electron and its orbital
motion. This is at the origin of the fine structure in atoms, the spin Hall
effect in semiconductors, and underlies many intriguing properties of
topological insulators, in particular their chiral edge states. Configurations
where neutral particles experience an effective spin-orbit coupling have been
recently proposed and realized using ultracold atoms and photons. Here we use
coupled micropillars etched out of a semiconductor microcavity to engineer a
spin-orbit Hamiltonian for photons and polaritons in a microstructure. The
coupling between the spin and orbital momentum arises from the polarisation
dependent confinement and tunnelling of photons between micropillars arranged
in the form of a hexagonal photonic molecule. Dramatic consequences of the
spin-orbit coupling are experimentally observed in these structures in the
wavefunction of polariton condensates, whose helical shape is directly visible
in the spatially resolved polarisation patterns of the emitted light. The
strong optical nonlinearity of polariton systems suggests exciting perspectives
for using quantum fluids of polaritons11 for quantum simulation of the
interplay between interactions and spin-orbit coupling.Comment: main text: pages 1-11 (4 figures); supplementary material: pages
12-28 (9 figures
State-recycling and time-resolved imaging in topological photonic lattices
Photonic lattices - arrays of optical waveguides - are powerful platforms for
simulating a range of phenomena, including topological phases. While probing
dynamics is possible in these systems, by reinterpreting the propagation
direction as "time," accessing long timescales constitutes a severe
experimental challenge. Here, we overcome this limitation by placing the
photonic lattice in a cavity, which allows the optical state to evolve through
the lattice multiple times. The accompanying detection method, which exploits a
multi-pixel single-photon detector array, offers quasi-real time-resolved
measurements after each round trip. We apply the state-recycling scheme to
intriguing photonic lattices emulating Dirac fermions and Floquet topological
phases. In this new platform, we also realise a synthetic pulsed electric
field, which can be used to drive transport within photonic lattices. This work
opens a new route towards the detection of long timescale effects in engineered
photonic lattices and the realization of hybrid analogue-digital simulators.Comment: Comments are welcom
Universal High-Frequency Behavior of Periodically Driven Systems: from Dynamical Stabilization to Floquet Engineering
We give a general overview of the high-frequency regime in periodically
driven systems and identify three distinct classes of driving protocols in
which the infinite-frequency Floquet Hamiltonian is not equal to the
time-averaged Hamiltonian. These classes cover systems, such as the Kapitza
pendulum, the Harper-Hofstadter model of neutral atoms in a magnetic field, the
Haldane Floquet Chern insulator and others. In all setups considered, we
discuss both the infinite-frequency limit and the leading finite-frequency
corrections to the Floquet Hamiltonian. We provide a short overview of Floquet
theory focusing on the gauge structure associated with the choice of
stroboscopic frame and the differences between stroboscopic and
non-stroboscopic dynamics. In the latter case one has to work with dressed
operators representing observables and a dressed density matrix. We also
comment on the application of Floquet Theory to systems described by static
Hamiltonians with well-separated energy scales and, in particular, discuss
parallels between the inverse-frequency expansion and the Schrieffer-Wolff
transformation extending the latter to driven systems.Comment: 84 pages, 25 figures, 4 appendice
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