Tilting flat bands in an empty microcavity

Recently microcavities with anisotropic materials are shown to be able to create novel bands with non-zero local Berry curvature. The anisotropic refractive index of the cavity layer is believed to be critical in opening an energy gap at the tilted Dirac points. In this work, we show that an anticrossing between a cavity mode and a Bragg mode can also form within an empty microcavity without any birefringent materials. Flat bands are observed within the energy gap due to the particular refractive index distribution of the sample. The intrinsic TE-TM splitting and XY splitting induce the squeezing of the cavity modes in momentum space, so that the flat bands are spin-dependently tilted. Our results pave the way to investigate the spin orbit coupling of photons in a simple microcavity without anisotropic cavity layers

Spiraling vortices in exciton-polariton condensates

We introduce the phenomenon of spiraling vortices in driven-dissipative (non-equilibrium) exciton-polariton condensates excited by a non-resonant pump beam. At suitable low pump intensities, these vortices are shown to spiral along circular trajectories whose diameter is inversely proportional to the effective mass of the polaritons, while the rotation period is mass independent. Both diameter and rotation period are inversely proportional to the pump intensity. Stable spiraling patterns in the form of complexes of multiple mutually-interacting vortices are also found. At elevated pump intensities, which create a stronger homogeneous background, we observe more complex vortex trajectories resembling Spirograph patterns

Lasing threshold doubling at the crossover from strong to weak coupling regime in GaAs microcavity

In a polariton, laser coherent monochromatic light is produced by a low-energy state of the system at the bottom of a polariton ‘trap’, where a condensate of polaritons is formed, requiring no conventional population inversion. Following the recent realization of polariton light-emitting diodes (LEDs) based on GaAs microcavities (MCs) operating up to room temperature, efforts have been directed towards the demonstration of an electrically injected polariton laser. However, until now, low-threshold polariton lasing in GaAs MCs under optical pumping has been reported only at low temperatures. Here, we investigate the temperature dependence of lasing threshold across the border of the strong-to-weak coupling regime transition in high-finesse GaAs MCs under non-resonant optical pumping. Remarkably, we find that although lasing in the strong coupling regime is lost when the temperature is raised from 25 to 70 K, the threshold only doubles, in stark contrast with the expected difference of two orders of magnitude. Our results can be explained by considering temperatureinduced thermalization of carriers to high wavevector states, increasing the reservoir’s overall carrier lifetime, resulting in an order of magnitude higher steady-state carrier density at 70 K under similar pumping conditions

Electrically controlling vortices in a neutral exciton polariton condensate at room temperature

Manipulating bosonic condensates with electric fields is very challenging as the electric fields do not directly interact with the neutral particles of the condensate. Here we demonstrate a simple electric method to tune the vorticity of exciton polariton condensates in a strong coupling liquid crystal (LC) microcavity with CsPbBr$_3$ microplates as active material at room temperature. In such a microcavity, the LC molecular director can be electrically modulated giving control over the polariton condensation in different modes. For isotropic non-resonant optical pumping we demonstrate the spontaneous formation of vortices with topological charges of +1, +2, -2, and -1. The topological vortex charge is controlled by a voltage in the range of 1 to 10 V applied to the microcavity sample. This control is achieved by the interplay of a built-in potential gradient, the anisotropy of the optically active perovskite microplates, and the electrically controllable LC molecular director in our system with intentionally broken rotational symmetry. Besides the fundamental interest in the achieved electric polariton vortex control at room temperature, our work paves the way to micron-sized emitters with electric control over the emitted light's phase profile and quantized orbital angular momentum for information processing and integration into photonic circuits

Spin selective filtering of polariton condensate flow

Spin-selective spatial filtering of propagating polariton condensates, using a controllable spin-dependent gating barrier, in a one-dimensional semiconductor microcavity ridge waveguide is reported. A nonresonant laser beam provides the source of propagating polaritons, while a second circularly polarized weak beam imprints a spin dependent potential barrier, which gates the polariton flow and generates polariton spin currents. A complete spin-based control over the blocked and transmitted polaritons is obtained by varying the gate polarization

Single-shot spatial instability and electric control of polariton condensates at room temperature

In planar microcavities, the transverse-electric and transverse-magnetic (TE-TM) mode splitting of cavity photons arises due to their different penetration into the Bragg mirrors and can result in optical spin-orbit coupling (SOC). In this work, we find that in a liquid crystal (LC) microcavity filled with perovskite microplates, the pronounced TE-TM splitting gives rise to a strong SOC that leads to the spatial instability of microcavity polariton condensates under single-shot excitation. Spatially varying hole burning and mode competition occurs between polarization components leading to different condensate profiles from shot to shot. The single-shot polariton condensates become stable when the SOC vanishes as the TE and TM modes are spectrally well separated from each other, which can be achieved by application of an electric field to our LC microcavity with electrically tunable anisotropy. Our findings are well reproduced and traced back to their physical origin by our detailed numerical simulations. With the electrical manipulation our work reveals how the shot-to-shot spatial instability of spatial polariton profiles can be engineered in anisotropic microcavities at room temperature, which will benefit the development of stable polariton-based optoeletronic and light-emitting devices

Dynamics of a polariton condensate transistor switch

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

Talbot Effect for Exciton Polaritons

e demonstrate, experimentally and theoretically, a Talbot effect for hybrid light-matter waves—an exciton-polariton condensate formed in a semiconductor microcavity with embedded quantum wells. The characteristic “Talbot carpet” is produced by loading the exciton-polariton condensate into a microstructured one-dimensional periodic array of mesa traps, which creates an array of phase-locked sources for coherent polariton flow in the plane of the quantum wells. The spatial distribution of the Talbot fringes outside the mesas mimics the near-field diffraction of a monochromatic wave on a periodic amplitude and phase grating with the grating period comparable to the wavelength. Despite the lossy nature of the polariton system, the Talbot pattern persists for distances exceeding the size of the mesas by an order of magnitude. Thus, our experiment demonstrates efficient shaping of the two-dimensional flow of coherent exciton polaritons by a one-dimensional “flat lens.

Publisher Correction: Single-shot condensation of exciton polaritons and the hole burning effect

Correction to: Nature Communications https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05349-4; published online: 9 August 2018 The original PDF version of this Article had an incorrect Published online date of 25 December 2018; it should have been 9 August 2018. This has been corrected in the PDF version of the Article. The HTML version was correct from the time of publication

Chiral Modes at Exceptional Points in Exciton-Polariton Quantum Fluid

We demonstrate the generation of chiral modes-vortex flows with fixed handedness in exciton-polariton quantum fluids. The chiral modes arise in the vicinity of exceptional points (non-Hermitian spectral degeneracies) in an optically induced resonator for exciton polaritons. In particular, a vortex is generated by driving two dipole modes of the non-Hermitian ring resonator into degeneracy. Transition through the exceptional point in the space of the system's parameters is enabled by precise manipulation of real and imaginary parts of the closed-wall potential forming the resonator. As the system is driven to the vicinity of the exceptional point, we observe the formation of a vortex state with a fixed orbital angular momentum (topological charge). This method can be extended to generate higher-order orbital angular momentum states through coalescence of multiple non-Hermitian spectral degeneracies. Our Letter demonstrates the possibility of exploiting nontrivial and counterintuitive properties of waves near exceptional points in macroscopic quantum systems