Switching Off a Microcavity Polariton Condensate near the Exceptional Point

An exceptional point (EP) arises when both the eigenvectors and eigenvalues coalesce, which in a physical system can be achieved by engineering the gain and loss coefficients, leading to a wide variety of counterintuitive phenomena. In photonic systems, the loss and gain are generally realized by th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:ACS photonics 2022-06, Vol.9 (6), p.2079-2086
Main Authors: Li, Yao, Ma, Xuekai, Hatzopoulos, Zaharias, Savvidis, Pavlos G., Schumacher, Stefan, Gao, Tingge
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:An exceptional point (EP) arises when both the eigenvectors and eigenvalues coalesce, which in a physical system can be achieved by engineering the gain and loss coefficients, leading to a wide variety of counterintuitive phenomena. In photonic systems, the loss and gain are generally realized by the special design of the samples. Light–matter hybrid exciton polaritons, however, are inherent non-Hermitian systems in which EPs can be approached easier such as in virtue of nonlinearity. In this work we demonstrate the existence of an EP in an exciton polariton condensate in a double-well potential. Near the EP, the polariton condensate localized in one potential well can be switched off by an additional optical excitation in the other well with very low (far below threshold) power, which surprisingly induces additional loss into the system. Increasing the power of the additional laser leads to a situation in which gain dominates in both wells again, such that the polaritons recondense in the two potential wells. The switching off near the EP can also be realized by the polariton nonlinearity induced blueshift in the same structure. Our results offer a simple way to optically manipulate the polariton condensation process in a double-well potential. Extending such a configuration to complex potential well lattices offers exciting prospects to explore high-order EPs and non-Hermitian topological photonics in a nonequilibrium many-body system.
ISSN:2330-4022
2330-4022
DOI:10.1021/acsphotonics.2c00288