Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide crystals (TMDCs) hold great promise for semiconductor optoelectronics because their bound electron-hole pairs (excitons) are stable at room temperature and ...interact strongly with light. When TMDCs are embedded in an optical microcavity, excitons can hybridise with cavity photons to form exciton polaritons, which inherit useful properties from their constituents. The ability to manipulate and trap polaritons on a microchip is critical for applications. Here, we create a non-trivial potential landscape for polaritons in monolayer WS
, and demonstrate their trapping and ballistic propagation across tens of micrometers. We show that the effects of dielectric disorder, which restrict the diffusion of WS
excitons and broaden their spectral resonance, are dramatically reduced for polaritons, leading to motional narrowing and preserved partial coherence. Linewidth narrowing and coherence are further enhanced in the trap. Our results demonstrate the possibility of long-range dissipationless transport and efficient trapping of TMDC polaritons in ambient conditions.
Optical trapping has been proven to be an effective method of separating exciton-polariton condensates from the incoherent high-energy excitonic reservoir located at the pumping laser position. This ...technique has significantly improved the coherent properties of exciton-polariton condensates, when compared to a quasi-homogeneous spot excitation scheme. Here, we compare two experimental methods on a sample, where a single spot excitation experiment allowed us only to observe photonic lasing in the weak coupling regime. In contrast, the ring-shaped excitation resulted in the two-threshold behavior, where an exciton-polariton condensate manifests itself at the first and photon lasing at the second threshold. Both lasing regimes are trapped in an optical potential created by the pump. We interpret the origin of this confining potential in terms of repulsive interactions of polaritons with the reservoir at the first threshold and as a result of the excessive free-carrier induced refractive index change of the microcavity at the second threshold. This observation offers a way to achieve multiple phases of photonic condensates in samples, e.g., containing novel materials as an active layer, where two-threshold behavior is impossible to achieve with a single excitation spot.
We report the observation of low-energy, low-momenta collective oscillations of an exciton-polariton condensate in a round "box" trap. The oscillations are dominated by the dipole and breathing ...modes, and the ratio of the frequencies of the two modes is consistent with that of a weakly interacting two-dimensional trapped Bose gas. The speed of sound extracted from the dipole oscillation frequency is smaller than the Bogoliubov sound, which can be partly explained by the influence of the incoherent reservoir. These results pave the way for understanding the effects of reservoir, dissipation, energy relaxation, and finite temperature on the superfluid properties of exciton-polariton condensates and other two-dimensional open-dissipative quantum fluids.
Collective (elementary) excitations of quantum bosonic condensates, including condensates of exciton polaritons in semiconductor microcavities, are a sensitive probe of interparticle interactions. In ...anisotropic microcavities with momentum-dependent transverse-electric–transverse-magnetic splitting of the optical modes, the excitations' dispersions are predicted to be strongly anisotropic, which is a consequence of the synthetic magnetic gauge field of the cavity, as well as the interplay between different interaction strengths for polaritons in the singlet and triplet spin configurations. Here, by directly measuring the dispersion of the collective excitations in a high-density optically trapped exciton-polariton condensate, we observe excellent agreement with the theoretical predictions for spinor polariton excitations. We extract the interaction constants for polaritons of the same and opposite spin and map out the characteristic spin textures in an interacting spinor condensate of exciton polaritons.
We report a systematic study of the temperature and excitation density behavior of an AlAs/AlGaAs, vertically emitting microcavity with embedded ternary Al
Ga
As/AlAs quantum wells in the strong ...coupling regime. Temperature-dependent photoluminescence measurements of the bare quantum wells indicate a crossover from the type-II indirect to the type-I direct transition. The resulting mixing of quantum well and barrier ground states in the conduction band leads to an estimated exciton binding energy systematically exceeding 25 meV. The formation of exciton-polaritons is evidenced in our quantum well microcavity via reflection measurements with Rabi splittings ranging from (13.93 ± 0.15) meV at low temperature (30 K) to (8.58 ± 0.40) meV at room temperature (300 K). Furthermore, the feasibility of polariton laser operation is demonstrated under non-resonant optical excitation conditions at 20 K and emission around 1.835 eV.
We demonstrate an experimental approach for creating spatially localized states in a semiconductor microcavity laser. In particular, we shape the spatial gain profile of a quasi-one-dimensional ...microcavity laser with a nonresonant, pulsed optical pump to create spatially localized structures, known as gain-pinned dissipative solitons, that exist due to the balance of gain and nonlinear losses. We directly probe the ultrafast formation dynamics and decay of these localized structures, showing that they are created on a picosecond timescale, orders of magnitude faster than laser cavity solitons. All of the experimentally observed features and dynamics are reconstructed by numerical modeling using a complex Ginzburg–Landau model, which explicitly takes into account the carrier density dynamics in the semiconductor.
The lateral interdot coupling is investigated in high density (∼10 cm−2 ) self-assembled InAs quantum dots (QDs) grown on an InP substrate. Two types of structures are selected for this study, in ...which QDs are embedded into an InAlAs matrix, forming nearly twice stronger confinement for an electron and a hole than expected for an InAlGaAs counterpart. Resonantly injected low carrier population in these families of QDs gives very different spectral and temporal response in the temperature range of 5-30 K. While InAs/InAlGaAs QDs show monotonic temperature quench of photoluminescence (PL), the process seems to be ineffective in the family of InAs/InAlAs dots. Moreover, the PL decay traces for InAs/InAlGaAs QDs reveal a two-exponential decay as compared to a mono-exponential one observed for InAs/InAlAs dots. While a short decay component of ≤1.9 ns has been attributed to recombination of an electron-hole pair confined in the dot, the long one of >2.4 ns, observed exclusively for InAs/InGaAlAs QDs, is attributed to recombination of spatially separated electron-hole pairs formed due to carrier exchange between adjacent dots.
The recent, dramatic increase in the incidence of childhood asthma suggests a role for environmental contaminants in the promotion of interactions between allergens and the respiratory system of ...young children. To establish whether exposure to an environmental stressor, ozone (O3), and an allergen, house dust mite (HDMA), during early childhood promotes remodeling of the epithelial-mesenchymal trophic unit (EMTU) of the tracheobronchial airway wall by altering postnatal development, infant rhesus monkeys were exposed to cyclic episodes of filtered air (FA), HDMA, O3, or HDMA plus O3. The following alterations in the EMTU were found after exposure to HDMA, O3, or HDMA plus O3: (1) reduced airway number; (2) hyperplasia of bronchial epithelium; (3) increased mucous cells; (4) shifts in distal airway smooth muscle bundle orientation and abundance to favor hyperreactivity; (5) interrupted postnatal basement membrane zone differentiation; (6) modified epithelial nerve fiber distribution; and (7) reorganization of the airway vascular and immune system. Conclusions: cyclic challenge of infants to toxic stress during postnatal lung development modifies the EMTU. This exacerbates the allergen response to favor development of intermittent airway obstruction associated with wheeze. And, exposure of infants during early postnatal lung development initiates compromises in airway growth and development that persist or worsen as growth continues, even with cessation of exposure.
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