Phase transitions to quantum condensed phases--such as Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC), superfluidity, and superconductivity--have long fascinated scientists, as they bring pure quantum effects to a macroscopic scale. BEC has, for example, famously been demonstrated in dilute atom gas of rubidium atoms at temperatures below 200 nanokelvin. Much effort has been devoted to finding a solid-state system in which BEC can take place. Promising candidate systems are semiconductor microcavities, in which photons are confined and strongly coupled to electronic excitations, leading to the creation of exciton polaritons. These bosonic quasi-particles are 10(9) times lighter than rubidium atoms, thus theoretically permitting BEC to occur at standard cryogenic temperatures. Here we detail a comprehensive set of experiments giving compelling evidence for BEC of polaritons. Above a critical density, we observe massive occupation of the ground state developing from a polariton gas at thermal equilibrium at 19 K, an increase of temporal coherence, and the build-up of long-range spatial coherence and linear polarization, all of which indicate the spontaneous onset of a macroscopic quantum phase.

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Cavity polaritons, the elementary optical excitations of semiconductor microcavities, may be understood as a superposition of excitons and cavity photons. Owing to their composite nature, these bosonic particles have a distinct optical response, at the same time very fast and highly nonlinear. Very efficient light amplification due to polariton-polariton parametric scattering has recently been reported in semiconductor microcavities at liquid-helium temperatures. Here we demonstrate polariton parametric amplification up to 120 K in GaAlAs-based microcavities and up to 220 K in CdTe-based microcavities. We show that the cut-off temperature for the amplification is ultimately determined by the binding energy of the exciton. A 5-micrometer-thick planar microcavity can amplify a weak light pulse more than 5,000 times. The effective gain coefficient of an equivalent homogeneous medium would be 107 cm-1. The subpicosecond duration and high efficiency of the amplification could be exploited for high-repetition all-optical microscopic switches and amplifiers. 105 polaritons occupy the same quantum state during the amplification, realizing a dynamical condensate of strongly interacting bosons which can be studied at high temperature.

A Feshbach resonance occurs when the energy of two interacting free particles comes into resonance with a molecular bound state. When approaching this resonance, marked changes in the interaction strength between the particles can arise. Feshbach resonances provide a powerful tool for controlling the interactions in ultracold atomic gases, which can be switched from repulsive to attractive [1][2][3][4] , and have allowed a range of many-body quantum physics e ects to be explored 5,6 . Here we demonstrate a Feshbach resonance based on the polariton spinor interactions in a semiconductor microcavity. By tuning the energy of two polaritons with anti-parallel spins across the biexciton bound state energy, we show an enhancement of attractive interactions and a prompt change to repulsive interactions. A mean-field two-channel model quantitatively reproduces the experimental results. This observation paves the way for a new tool for tuning polariton interactions and to move forward into quantum correlated polariton physics.A semiconductor microcavity is a unique system where exciton-polaritons emerge from the strong coupling between an exciton and a photon. The demonstration of Bose-Einstein condensation of exciton-polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity 7 has attracted much attention and opened a wide field of research on polariton quantum fluids, such as superfluidity 8 , quantum vortices 9 and Bogoliubov dispersion [10][11][12] . Many more examples could be proposed to highlight the fact that polaritons provide a concrete realization of a bosonic interacting many-body quantum system, complementing the work performed on ultracold atom systems.Furthermore, polaritons exhibit a polarization degree of freedom, with a one-to-one connection to two counter circular polarizations for their photonic part. The different excitonic content of both polarization states results in asymmetric spinor interactions. Such spinor interactions offer a wide range of effects and a very rich physics to explore in semiconductor microcavities [13][14][15][16][17][18] .In this work, we demonstrate a Feshbach resonance in a polariton semiconductor microcavity. Feshbach biexcitonic resonant scattering is investigated through spectrally resolved circularly polarized pump-probe spectroscopy on a III-V based microcavity (Methods). To bring the energy of a two-lower polariton state into resonance with the biexciton state we change the cavity exciton detuning (Fig. 1a,c). We evidence the resonant polariton scattering by probing the anti-parallel spin polariton interactions when scanning the two-polariton energy across the bound biexciton state. We clearly show the enhancement of polariton interactions and the change of their character from attractive to repulsive. Moreover, we observe a decrease of the polariton resonance amplitude when the lower polariton energy is in the vicinity of the biexciton energy. The results are modelled by numerical simulations based on a meanfield two-channel model that includes coupling between polaritons and biexcito...

Picosecond and femtosecond spectroscopy allow the detailed study of carrier dynamics in nanostructured materials. In such experiments, a laser pulse normally excites several nanostructures at once. However, spectroscopic information may also be acquired using pulses from an electron beam in a modern electron microscope, exploiting a phenomenon called cathodoluminescence. This approach offers several advantages. The multimode imaging capabilities of the electron microscope enable the correlation of optical properties (via cathodoluminescence) with surface morphology (secondary electron mode) at the nanometre scale. The broad energy range of the electrons can excite wide-bandgap materials, such as diamond- or gallium-nitride-based structures that are not easily excited by conventional optical means. But perhaps most intriguingly, the small beam can probe a single selected nanostructure. Here we apply an original time-resolved cathodoluminescence set-up to describe carrier dynamics within single gallium-arsenide-based pyramidal nanostructures with a time resolution of 10 picoseconds and a spatial resolution of 50 nanometres. The behaviour of such charge carriers could be useful for evaluating elementary components in quantum computers, optical quantum gates or single photon sources for quantum cryptography.

We report on the realization of polariton quantum boxes in a semiconductor microcavity under strong coupling regime. The quantum boxes consist of mesas, etched on the top of the spacer of a microcavity, that confine the cavity photon. For mesas with sizes of the order of a few microns in width and nanometers in depth, we observe quantization of the polariton modes in several states, caused by the lateral confinement. We evidence the strong exciton-photon coupling regime through a typical anticrossing curve for each quantized level. Moreover, the growth technique permits one to obtain high-quality samples, and opens the way for the conception of new optoelectronic devices. © 2006 American Institute of Physics. ͓DOI: 10.1063/1.2172409͔Confining semiconductor structures allows the study of various fundamental effects, ranging from the Purcell effect to the full quantum confinement. Such confinement is also used for applications in many fields, from optoelectronics to quantum information. Previous works have focused on different aspects: on the one hand, on the matter part, with the confinement of the excitonic resonances in quantum wells, quantum wires, and quantum dots. On the other hand, environment for the electromagnetic field has been modified by optical confinement in different types of cavities. Additionally since the middle of the 90s, low dimensional devices have been realized in the strong coupling regime. 1 Confinement can enhance the interactions, modify the real and imaginary parts of the resonance's energy, or open access to new interaction processes. It is also often considered as a possible way to obtain a condensed phase of bosons in semiconductors, 2 but so far the fermionic nature of excitons has always become dominant upon increasing density. In this sense, polaritons are of great interest as, despite their excitonic content, they have a very small effective mass in comparison to the exciton ͑thanks to their photonic component͒, which theoretically increases their temperature of condensation ͑above 0.1 K͒. 3 The peculiar trap shape of the lower microcavity polariton dispersion curve has motivated several relaxation experiments towards the bottom of this "trap" 4,5 but no clear evidence for the formation of spontaneous coherence formation has been given yet.Zero-dimensional ͑0D͒ Polariton confinement can be achieved either through their excitonic or through their photonic component. Recently, evidence for 0D polaritons has been given with single quantum dots in micropillars, 6 photonic nanocavities, 7 or microdisks, 8 and for a large number of excitations in micropillar structures. 9-11 Here we consider a novel system under strong coupling regime, where 0D confinement is achieved through the photonic part of polaritons in high Q cavities. Our original structure contains polariton quantum boxes, constituted by mesas in the spacer layer of a semiconductor microcavity, allowing to keep the strong coupling regime. Each mesa, by acting on the two degrees of freedom of the photonic component of the two...

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We demonstrate three-dimensional spatial confinement of exciton-polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity. Polaritons are confined within a micron-sized region of slightly larger cavity thickness, called mesa, through lateral trapping of their photon component. This results in a shallow potential well that allows the simultaneous existence of extended states above the barrier. Photoluminescence spectra were measured as a function of either the emission angle or the position on the sample. Striking signatures of confined states of lower and upper polaritons, together with the corresponding extended states at higher energy, were found. In particular, the confined states appear only within the mesa region, and are characterized by a discrete energy spectrum and a broad angular pattern. A theoretical model of polariton states, based on a realistic description of the confined photon modes, supports our observations.