Highly nonlinear optical materials with strong effective photon-photon interactions are required for ultrafast and quantum optical signal processing circuitry. Here we report strong Kerr-like nonlinearities by employing efficient optical transitions of charged excitons (trions) observed in semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs). By hybridising trions in monolayer MoSe 2 at low electron densities with a microcavity mode, we realise trionpolaritons exhibiting significant energy shifts at small photon fluxes due to phase space filling. We find the ratio of trion-to neutral exciton-polariton interaction strength is in the range from 10 to 100 in TMDC materials and that trion-polariton nonlinearity is comparable to that in other polariton systems. The results are in good agreement with a theory accounting for the composite nature of excitons and trions and deviation of their statistics from that of ideal bosons and fermions. Our findings open a way to scalable quantum optics applications with TMDCs.

Optical bound states in the continuum (BICs) provide a way to engineer resonant response in photonic crystals with giant quality factors. The extended interaction time in such systems is particularly promising for enhancement of nonlinear optical processes and development of a new generation of active optical devices. However, the achievable interaction strength is limited by the purely photonic character of optical BICs. Here, 1 arXiv:1905.13505v1 [cond-mat.mes-hall] 31 May 2019 we mix optical BIC in a photonic crystal slab with excitons in atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenide MoSe 2 via strong coupling to form exciton-polaritons with Rabi splitting exceeding 27 meV. We experimentally show BIC-like behavior of both upper and lower polariton branches, with complete suppression of radiation into far-field at the BIC wavevector and strongly varying Q-factor in its vicinity. Owing to an effective disorder averaging through motional narrowing, we achieve small polariton linewidth of 2 meV and demonstrate linewidth control via angle and temperature tuning. Our results pave the way towards developing tunable BIC-based polaritonic devices for sensing, lasing, and nonlinear optics. Optical bound states in the continuum (BICs), supported by photonic crystal structures of certain geometries, have received much attention recently as a novel approach to generating extremely spectrally narrow resonant responses. 1,2 Since BICs are uncoupled from the radiation continuum through symmetry protection 3 or resonance trapping, 4 their high quality factors, while reaching 10 5 − 10 6 , can be robust to perturbations of photonic crystal geometric parameters. This enables a broad range of practical applications, including recently demonstrated spectral filtering, 5 chemical and biological sensing, 6,7 and lasing. 4Providing an efficient light-trapping mechanism, optical BICs are particularly attractive for enhancing nonlinear optical effects, with recent theoretical proposals discussing enhanced bistability 8 and Kerr-type focusing nonlinearity. 9 However, for practical realization of these proposals, a significantly stronger material nonlinear susceptibility is needed than generally available in dielectric-based photonic crystals.An attractive approach to the enhancement of effective nonlinearity is through the use of exciton-polaritons -hybrid quasi-particles that inherit both the coherent properties of photonic modes and interaction strength of excitons. 10,11 Hybrid nanophotonic systems incorporating atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have proven to be a particularly promising platform owing to their ease of fabrication and possibility of room temperature operation. [12][13][14] In addition to conventional microcavity-based designs, TMD

The rise of quantum science and technologies motivates photonics research to seek new platforms with strong light-matter interactions to facilitate quantum behaviors at moderate light intensities. Topological polaritons (TPs) offer an ideal platform in this context, with unique properties stemming from resilient topological states of light strongly coupled with matter. Here we explore polaritonic metasurfaces based on 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) as a promising platform for topological polaritonics. We show that the strong coupling between topological photonic modes of the metasurface and excitons in TMDs yields a topological polaritonic Z2 phase. We experimentally confirm the emergence of one-way spin-polarized edge TPs in metasurfaces integrating MoSe2 and WSe2. Combined with the valley polarization in TMD monolayers, the proposed system enables an approach to engage the photonic angular momentum and valley and spin of excitons, offering a promising platform for photonic/solid-state interfaces for valleytronics and spintronics.

Modern nanophotonics has witnessed the rise of “electric anapoles” (EDAs), destructive interferences of electric and toroidal electric dipoles, actively exploited to resonantly decrease radiation from nanoresonators. However, the inherent duality in Maxwell equations suggests the intriguing possibility of “magnetic anapoles,” involving a nonradiating composition of a magnetic dipole and a magnetic toroidal dipole. Here, a hybrid anapole (HA) of mixed electric and magnetic character is predicted and observed experimentally via dark field spectroscopy, with all the dominant multipoles being suppressed by the toroidal terms in a nanocylinder. Breaking the spherical symmetry allows to overlap up to four anapoles stemming from different multipoles with just two tuning parameters. This effect is due to a symmetry‐allowed connection between the resonator multipolar response and its eigenstates. The authors delve into the physics of such current configurations in the stationary and transient regimes and explore new ultrafast phenomena arising at sub‐picosecond timescales, associated with the HA dynamics. The theoretical results allow the design of non‐Huygens metasurfaces featuring a dual functionality: perfect transparency in the stationary regime and controllable ultrashort pulse beatings in the transient. Besides offering significant advantages with respect to EDAs, HAs can play an essential role in developing the emerging field of ultrafast resonant phenomena.

Exciton-polaritons offer a versatile platform for realization of all-optical integrated logic gates due to the strong effective optical nonlinearity resulting from the exciton–exciton interactions. In most of the current excitonic materials there exists a direct connection between the exciton robustness to thermal fluctuations and the strength of the exciton–exciton interaction, making materials with the highest levels of exciton nonlinearity applicable at cryogenic temperatures only. Here, we show that strong polaronic effects, characteristic for perovskite materials, allow overcoming this limitation. Namely, we demonstrate a record-high value of the nonlinear optical response in the nanostructured organic–inorganic halide perovskite MAPbI3, experimentally detected as a 19.7 meV blueshift of the polariton branch under femtosecond laser irradiation. This is substantially higher than characteristic values for the samples based on conventional semiconductors and monolayers of transition-metal dichalcogenides. The observed strong polaron-enhanced nonlinearity exists for both tetragonal and orthorhombic phases of MAPbI3 and remains stable at elevated temperatures.