Evolution of Temporal Coherence in Confined Exciton-Polariton Condensates

High Efficiency of Exciton-Polariton Lasing in a 2D Multilayer Structure

We have placed a van der Waals homostructure, formed by stacking three two-dimensional layers of WS2 separated by insulating hBN, similar to a multiple-quantum well structure, inside a microcavity, which facilitates the formation of quasiparticles known as exciton-polaritons. The polaritons are a combination of light and matter, allowing laser emission to be enhanced by nonlinear scattering, as seen in prior polariton lasers. In the experiments reported here, we have observed laser emission with an ultralow threshold. The threshold was approximately 59 nW/μm2, with a lasing efficiency of 3.82%. These findings suggest a potential for efficient laser operations using such homostructures.

Second-Order Temporal Coherence of Polariton Lasers Based on an Atomically Thin Crystal in a Microcavity

Bosonic condensation and lasing of exciton polaritons in microcavities is a fascinating solid-state phenomenon. It provides a versatile platform to study out-of-equilibrium many-body physics and has recently appeared at the forefront of quantum technologies. Here, we study the photon statistics via the second-order temporal correlation function of polariton lasing emerging from an optical microcavity with an embedded atomically thin MoSe_{2} crystal. Furthermore, we investigate the macroscopic polariton phase transition for varying excitation powers and temperatures. The lower-polariton exhibits photon bunching below the threshold, implying a dominant thermal distribution of the emission, while above the threshold, the second-order correlation transits towards unity, which evidences the formation of a coherent state. Our findings are in agreement with a microscopic numerical model, which explicitly includes scattering with phonons on the quantum level.

Tracking Quantum Coherence in Polariton Condensates with Time-Resolved Tomography

Long-term quantum coherence constitutes one of the main challenges when engineering quantum devices. However, easily accessible means to quantify complex decoherence mechanisms are not readily available, nor are sufficiently stable systems. We harness novel phase-space methods-expressed through non-Gaussian convolutions of highly singular Glauber-Sudarshan quasiprobabilities-to dynamically monitor quantum coherence in polariton condensates with significantly enhanced coherence times. Via intensity- and time-resolved reconstructions of such phase-space functions from homodyne detection data, we probe the systems' resourcefulness for quantum information processing up to the nanosecond regime. Our experimental findings are confirmed through numerical simulations, for which we develop an approach that renders established algorithms compatible with our methodology. In contrast to commonly applied phase-space functions, our distributions can be directly sampled from measured data, including uncertainties, and yield a simple operational measure of quantum coherence via the distribution's variance in phase. Therefore, we present a broadly applicable framework and a platform to explore time-dependent quantum phenomena and resources.

Hybridized Exciton-Photon-Phonon States in a Transition Metal Dichalcogenide van der Waals Heterostructure Microcavity

Excitons in atomically thin transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have been established as an attractive platform to explore polaritonic physics, owing to their enormous binding energies and giant oscillator strength. Basic spectral features of exciton polaritons in TMD microcavities, thus far, were conventionally explained via two-coupled-oscillator models. This ignores, however, the impact of phonons on the polariton energy structure. Here we establish and quantify the threefold coupling between excitons, cavity photons, and phonons. For this purpose, we employ energy-momentum-resolved photoluminescence and spatially resolved coherent two-dimensional spectroscopy to investigate the spectral properties of a high-quality-factor microcavity with an embedded WSe_{2} van der Waals heterostructure at room temperature. Our approach reveals a rich multibranch structure which thus far has not been captured in previous experiments. Simulation of the data reveals hybridized exciton-photon-phonon states, providing new physical insight into the exciton polariton system based on layered TMDs.

Engineering Photon Statistics in a Spinor Polariton Condensate

We implement full polarization tomography on photon correlations in a spinor exciton-polariton condensate. Our measurements reveal condensate pseudospin mean-field dynamics spanning from stochastic switching between linear polarization components, limit cycles, and stable fixed points, and their intrinsic relation to the condensate photon statistics. We optically harness the cavity birefringence, polariton interactions, and the optical orientation of an incoherent exciton reservoir to engineer photon statistics with precise control. Our results demonstrate a smooth transition from a highly coherent to a super-thermal state of the condensate polarization components.

Distinguishing intrinsic photon correlations from external noise with frequency-resolved homodyne detection

In this work, we apply homodyne detection to investigate the frequency-resolved photon statistics of a cw light field emitted by a driven-dissipative semiconductor system in real time. We demonstrate that studying the frequency dependence of the photon number noise allows us to distinguish intrinsic noise properties of the emitter from external noise sources such as mechanical noise while maintaining a sub-picosecond temporal resolution. We further show that performing postselection on the recorded data opens up the possibility to study rare events in the dynamics of the emitter. By doing so, we demonstrate that in rare instances, additional external noise may actually result in reduced photon number noise in the emission.

Spectroscopic Signatures of Quantum Many-Body Correlations in Polariton Microcavities

We theoretically investigate the many-body states of exciton polaritons that can be observed by pump-probe spectroscopy in high-Q inorganic microcavities. Here, a weak-probe "spin-down" polariton is introduced into a coherent state of "spin-up" polaritons created by a strong pump. We show that the ↓ impurities become dressed by excitations of the ↑ medium, and that they form new polaronic quasiparticles that feature two-point and three-point many-body quantum correlations that, in the low density regime, arise from coupling to the vacuum biexciton and triexciton states, respectively. In particular, we find that these correlations generate additional branches and avoided crossings in the ↓ optical transmission spectrum that have a characteristic dependence on the ↑-polariton density. Our results thus demonstrate a way to directly observe correlated many-body states in an exciton-polariton system that go beyond classical mean-field theories.

Light-Matter Interaction and Lasing in Lead Halide Perovskites

Lead halide perovskites (LHPs) are attractive material systems for light emission, thanks to the ease and diverse routes of synthesis, the broad tunability in color, the high emission quantum efficiencies, and the strong light-matter coupling which may potentially lead to exciton-polariton condensation. This account contrasts the laser-like coherent light emission from highly lossy Fabry-Perot cavities, formed naturally from LHP nanowires (NWs) and nanoplates (NPs), with highly reflective cavities made of LHP gain media, sandwiched between two distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) mirrors. The mechanism responsible for the operation of conventional semiconductor lasers involves stimulated emission of electron and hole pairs bound by the Coulomb potential, i.e., excitons or, at excitation density above the so-called Mott threshold, an electron-hole plasma (EHP). We discuss how lasing from LHP NWs or NPs likely originates from stimulated emission of an EHP, not excitons or exciton-polaritons. A character central to this kind of lasing is the dynamically changing photonic properties in the naturally formed cavity. In contrast to the more static conditions of a DBR cavity, lasing modes and gain profiles are extremely sensitive to material properties and excitation conditions in an NW/NP cavity. While such unstable photonic cavities pose engineering challenges in the application of NW/NP lasers, they provide excellent probes of many-body physics in the LHP material. For sufficiently strong light-matter coupling expected for LHPs in DBR cavities, an exciton-polariton, i.e., the superposition state between the exciton and the cavity photon, can form. An exciting prospect of strong light-matter coupling is the potential formation of an exciton polariton condensate, which possesses many interesting quantum and nonlinear effects, such as superfluidity, long-range coherence, and laserlike light emission. However, it is difficult to distinguish coherent light from an exciton-polariton condensate and that from conventional stimulated laser emission. Several reports have established the condition of strong coupling for LHPs in DBR cavities. We stress, however, that these studies have not included necessary experiments to unambiguously establish the formation of exciton-polariton condensation, and several experiments and routes of analysis are needed to make a more convincing case for exciton-polariton condensation in LHP based systems. The potential of exciton-polariton condensation expands the horizon of LHP materials from conventional optoelectronics to quantum devices.

Photon-Number-Resolved Measurement of an Exciton-Polariton Condensate

We measure the full photon-number distribution emitted from a Bose condensate of microcavity exciton polaritons confined in a micropillar cavity. The statistics are acquired by means of a photon-number-resolving transition edge sensor. We directly observe that the photon-number distribution evolves with the nonresonant optical excitation power from geometric to quasi-Poissonian statistics, which is canonical for a transition from a thermal to a coherent state. Moreover, the photon-number distribution allows one to evaluate the higher-order photon correlations, shedding further light on the coherence formation and phase transition of the polariton condensate. The experimental data are analyzed in terms of thermal-coherent states, which gives direct access to the thermal and coherent fraction from the measured distributions. These results pave the way for a full understanding of the contribution of interactions in light-matter condensates in the coherence buildup at threshold.

Efficient entanglement generation between exciton-polaritons using shortcuts to adiabaticity

We use shortcuts to adiabaticity, a method introduced to speed up adiabatic quantum dynamics, for the efficient generation of entanglement between exciton-polaritons in coupled semiconductor microcavities. A substantial improvement is achieved, compared to a recently proposed method that essentially enhances the nonlinearity of the system. Our method takes advantage of a time-dependent nonlinearity, which can become larger than the Josephson coupling between the cavities, while the conventional method is restricted to a constant nonlinearity lower than the coupling. The suggested procedure is expected to also find application in other research areas in optics, where nonlinear interacting bosons are encountered.