Bloch oscillations of hybrid light-matter particles in a waveguide array
Abstract
Bloch oscillations are a phenomenon well known from quantum mechanics where electrons in a lattice experience an oscillatory motion in the presence of an electric field gradient. Here, the authors report on Bloch oscillations of hybrid light−matter particles, called exciton‐polaritons (polaritons), being confined in an array of coupled microcavity waveguides. To this end, the waveguide widths and their mutual couplings are carefully designed such that a constant energy gradient is induced perpendicular to the direction of motion of the propagating polaritons. This technique allows us to directly observe and study Bloch oscillations in real‐ and momentum‐space. Furthermore, the experimental findings are supported by numerical simulations based on a modified Gross–Pitaevskii approach. This work provides an important transfer of basic concepts of quantum mechanics to integrated solid state devices, using quantum fluids of light.
Citation
Beierlein , J , Egorov , O A , Harder , T H , Gagel , P , Emmerling , M , Schneider , C , Höfling , S , Peschel , U & Klembt , S 2021 , ' Bloch oscillations of hybrid light-matter particles in a waveguide array ' , Advanced Optical Materials , vol. Early View . https://doi.org/10.1002/adom.202100126
Publication
Advanced Optical Materials
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2195-1071Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Advanced Optical Materials published by Wiley‐VCH GmbH. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
Funding: The Würzburg and Jena group acknowledge financial support within the DFG projects PE 523/18-1 and KL3124/2-1. The Würzburg group acknowledges financial support by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy–EXC2147 “ct.qmat” (project id 390858490). S.H. also acknowledges support by the EPSRC “Hybrid Polaritonics” grant (EP/M025330/1). T.H.H. and S.H. acknowledge funding by the doctoral training program Elitenetzwerk Bayern Graduate School “Topological insulators” (Tols 836315). T.H.H. acknowledges support by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.Collections
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