Engineering the spatial confinement of exciton-polaritons in semiconductors

We demonstrate the spatial confinement of electronic excitations in a solid state system, within novel artificial structures that can be designed having arbitrary dimensionality and shape. The excitations under study are exciton-polaritons in a planar semiconductor microcavity. They are confined within a micron-sized region through lateral trapping of their photon component. Striking signatures of confined states of lower and upper polaritons are found in angle-resolved light emission spectra, where a discrete energy spectrum and broad angular patterns are present. A theoretical model supports unambiguously our observations

Many-body physics of a quantum fluid of exciton-polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity

Some recent results concerning nonlinear optics in semiconductor microcavities are reviewed from the point of view of the many-body physics of an interacting photon gas. Analogies with systems of cold atoms at thermal equilibrium are drawn, and the peculiar behaviours due to the non-equilibrium regime pointed out. The richness of the predicted behaviours shows the potentialities of optical systems for the study of the physics of quantum fluids.Comment: Proceedings of QFS2006 conference to appear on JLT

Zero dimensional exciton-polaritons

We present a novel semiconductor structure in which 0D polaritons coexist with 2D microcavity polaritons. Spatial trapping of the 2D microcavity polaritons results from the confinement of their photonic part in a potential well, consisting of an adjustable thickness variation of the spacer layer. This original technique allows to create polaritonic boxes of any size and shape. Strong coupling regime is evidenced by the typical energy level anticrossing, in real space and in momentum space, and supported by a theoretical model

Symmetry-breaking Effects for Polariton Condensates in Double-Well Potentials

We study the existence, stability, and dynamics of symmetric and anti-symmetric states of quasi-one-dimensional polariton condensates in double-well potentials, in the presence of nonresonant pumping and nonlinear damping. Some prototypical features of the system, such as the bifurcation of asymmetric solutions, are similar to the Hamiltonian analog of the double-well system considered in the realm of atomic condensates. Nevertheless, there are also some nontrivial differences including, e.g., the unstable nature of both the parent and the daughter branch emerging in the relevant pitchfork bifurcation for slightly larger values of atom numbers. Another interesting feature that does not appear in the atomic condensate case is that the bifurcation for attractive interactions is slightly sub-critical instead of supercritical. These conclusions of the bifurcation analysis are corroborated by direct numerical simulations examining the dynamics of the system in the unstable regime.MICINN (Spain) project FIS2008- 0484

Coherence properties of polaritons in semiconductor microcavities

In this work we present the coherent control of polariton parametric scattering with weak phase locked probe pulses. It is demonstrated that the signal emission arising from the parametric scattering is completely coherent for moderate excitation power, whereas at high pump density the dynamics appears less coherent due to the depletion of the pump polariton reservoir. It is furthermore demonstrated that the phase of the probe pulses controls the emission from signal, pump, and idler at the same time

Silver nanodiscs for light scattering in thin epitaxial silicon solar cells: Influence of the disc radius

The effect of silver nanoparticles showing localised plasmonic resonances on the efficiency of thin film silicon solar cells is studied. Silver (Ag) nanodiscs were deposited on the surface of silicon cells grown on highly doped silicon substrates, through hole-mask colloidal lithography, which is a low-cost and bottom-up technique. The cells have no back reflector in order to exclusively study the effect of the front surface on their properties. Cells with nanoparticles were compared with both bare silicon cells and cells with an antireflection coating. We optically observe a resonance showing an absorption increase controllable by the disc radius. We also see an increase in efficiency with respect to bare cells, but we see a decrease in efficiency with respect to cells with an antireflection coating due to losses at wavelengths below the plasmon resonance. As the material properties are not notably affected by the particles deposition, the loss mechanism is an important absorption in the nanoparticles. We confirm this by numerical simulations