Dark Solitons in High Velocity Waveguide Polariton Fluids

These authors contributed equally to this work.Engineering strong interactions between optical photons is a great challenge for quantum science. Envisioned applications range from the realization of photonic gates for quantum information processing [1] to synthesis of photonic quantum materials for investigation of strongly-correlated drivendissipative systems [2]. Polaritonics, based on the strong coupling of photons to atomic or electronic excitations in an optical resonator, has emerged as a promising approach to implement those tasks [3]. Recent experiments demonstrated the onset of quantum correlations in the exciton-polariton system [4,5], showing that strong polariton blockade [6] could be achieved if interactions were an order of magnitude stronger. Here, we report time resolved four-wave mixing experiments on a two-dimensional electron system embedded in an optical cavity [7], demonstrating that polariton-polariton interactions are strongly enhanced when the electrons are initially in a fractional quantum Hall state. Our experiments indicate that in addition to strong correlations in the electronic ground state, exciton-electron interactions leading to the formation of polaron polaritons [8-11] play a key role in enhancing the nonlinear optical response. Besides potential applications in realization of strongly interacting photonic systems, our findings suggest that nonlinear optical measurements could provide information about fractional quantum Hall states that is not accessible in linear optical response.Polaritons have recently attracted considerable interest, motivated by the fact that their interactions can be engineered almost at will through the tunability of their matter component. For example, strongly interacting Rydberg polaritons have recently been obtained using the nonlinear behavior of Rydberg excitations in an ensemble of atoms [12], which led to the demonstration of Rydberg polariton blockade [13] where the presence of a single polariton in a well-delimited region of space prevents the resonant injection of other polaritons. In parallel, efforts are being made to realize polariton blockade in condensed matter systems that hold great potential for realizing compact and integrated synthetic quantum materials [3]. Exciton polaritons in semiconductor materials are part light part matter particles that arise from the strong coupling of a quantum well exciton and a cavity photon [14]. These photonic particles inherit a nonlinear behavior from exciton-exciton interactions [2,15,16]. For efficient blockade to be obtained, the nonlinearity U needs to be greater than the inverse lifetime γ of the polaritons [6]. Recent state-of-the art experiments based on photon correlation measurements in semi-integrated microcavities attained optimized values of the ratio U/γ 0.1 in a photonic dot with about 3 µm 2 area [4,5]. These experiments represent the culmination of decade long technological developments aimed at increasing U/γ through reducing the photonic mode area [17][18][19] as well as increasing t...

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“…This result is compatible with other values reported in the literature [4,5,15,16,18,[41][42][43][44].…”

Section: B Fit Of Exciton-polariton Interaction Strengthsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…Based on a numerical analysis relying on solving the Gross-Pitaevskii equation (see Supplementary), we quantify the nonlinearity of excitonpolaritons for the neutral quantum well sample. We obtain a value of 13 +18 −9 µeV µm 2 for the exciton-exciton interaction strength, which is consistent with values reported elsewhere [4,5,18,[41][42][43][44].…”

supporting

confidence: 91%

Nonlinear optics in the fractional quantum Hall regime

Knüppel

Ravets

Kroner

et al. 2019

Nature

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“…An accurate knowledge of this interaction strength is fundamental to understanding the many-body polariton problem, both in the mean-field limit [3,4] and beyond. However, its precise value has been fraught with uncertainty, as experiments have reported values differing by several orders of magnitude [42][43][44][45][46]. Moreover, there are conflicting theoretical results regarding the effect of the light-matter coupling [14][15][16][17].…”

Section: Polariton-polariton Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microscopic description of exciton-polaritons in microcavities

Levinsen

Parish

2019

Phys. Rev. Research

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We investigate the microscopic description of exciton-polaritons that involves electrons, holes and photons within a two-dimensional microcavity. We show that in order to recover the simplified exciton-photon model that is typically used to describe polaritons, one must correctly define the exciton-photon detuning and exciton-photon (Rabi) coupling in terms of the bare microscopic parameters. For the case of unscreened Coulomb interactions, we find that the exciton-photon detuning is strongly shifted from its bare value in a manner akin to renormalization in quantum electrodynamics. Within the renormalized theory, we exactly solve the problem of a single exciton-polariton for the first time and obtain the full spectral response of the microcavity. In particular, we find that the electron-hole wave function of the polariton can be significantly modified by the very strong Rabi couplings achieved in current experiments. Our microscopic approach furthermore allows us to properly determine the effective interaction between identical polaritons, which goes beyond previous theoretical work. Our findings are thus important for understanding and characterizing exciton-polariton systems across the whole range of polariton densities. arXiv:1902.07966v1 [cond-mat.quant-gas]

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“…The interaction-dominated Thomas-Fermi regime in a box potential achieved in our experiments allows us to perform a direct measurement of the polariton-polariton interaction strength. We compare our results with theoretical predictions [37][38][39][40] , and put them in the context of existing measurements above 28,[41][42][43][44] and below 45 the condensation threshold.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Direct measurement of polariton-polariton interaction strength in the Thomas-Fermi regime of exciton-polariton condensation

et al. 2019

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Bosonic condensates of exciton polaritons (light-matter quasiparticles in a semiconductor) provide a solid-state platform for studies of non-equilibrium quantum systems with a spontaneous macroscopic coherence. These driven, dissipative condensates typically coexist and interact with an incoherent reservoir, which undermines measurements of key parameters of the condensate. Here, we overcome this limitation by creating a high-density exciton-polariton condensate in an opticallyinduced box trap. In this so-called Thomas-Fermi regime, the condensate is fully separated from the reservoir and its behaviour is dominated by interparticle interactions. We use this regime to directly measure the polariton-polariton interaction strength, and reduce the existing uncertainty in its value from four orders of magnitude to within three times the theoretical prediction. The Thomas-Fermi regime has previously been demonstrated only in ultracold atomic gases in thermal equilibrium. In a non-equilibrium exciton-polariton system, this regime offers a novel opportunity to study interaction-driven effects unmasked by an incoherent reservoir.

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Dark Solitons in High Velocity Waveguide Polariton Fluids

Cited by 83 publications

References 46 publications

Nonlinear optics in the fractional quantum Hall regime

Nonlinear optics in the fractional quantum Hall regime

Microscopic description of exciton-polaritons in microcavities

Direct measurement of polariton-polariton interaction strength in the Thomas-Fermi regime of exciton-polariton condensation

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