Quantum fluids of light in all-optical scatterer lattices

Abstract

One of the recently established paradigms in condensed matter physics is examining a system's behaviour in artificially constructed potentials, giving insight into physical phenomena of quantum fluids in hard-to-reach settings. A prominent example is the matter-wave scatterer lattice, also known as the barrier lattice or repulsive Dirac comb. There, high energy matter waves undergo transmission and reflection through narrow width barriers leading to stringent phase matching conditions with subsequent lattice band formation. It is one of the most well taught system in quantum mechanics but its realisation for macroscopic matter-wave fluids has remained elusive, in contrast to evanescently coupled lattice sites or waveguides. Here, we implement and study a system of exciton-polariton condensates in a non-Hermitian Lieb lattice of scatterer potentials by optically injecting incoherent exciton clouds which both emit, and interact with traveling polariton waves. By fine tuning the lattice parameters, we reveal a nonequilibrium phase transition between two distinct regimes of polariton condensation: a scatterer lattice of gain guided polaritons condensing on the lattice potential maxima, and trapped polaritons condensing in the lattice potential minima. The transition is characterised by multimodal condensation due to gain competition between the two regimes. Energy tomography on the polariton emission enables us to measure the intricate band structure of the optically induced lattices. Our results pave the way towards unexplored physics of non-Hermitian fluids in non-stationary mixtures of confined and freely expanding waves.

References in corpus (13)

• Observation of a localized flat-band state in a photonic Lieb lattice
• Excitations in a non-equilibrium Bose-Einstein condensate of exciton-polaritons
• Observation of bound states in Lieb photonic lattices
• Non-reciprocal phase transitions
• Tools for quantum simulation with ultracold atoms in optical lattices
• Energy Relaxation in a 1-D Polariton Condensate
• Polariton condensation in $S$- and $P$-flatbands in a two-dimensional Lieb lattice
• Non-reciprocal transport of Exciton-Polaritons in a non-Hermitian chain
• Synthetic band-structure engineering in polariton crystals with non-Hermitian topological phases
• Engineering spatial coherence in lattices of polariton condensates
• Polariton condensation in a planar microcavity with InGaAs quantum wells
• Non-Hermitian Topological End-Mode Lasing in Polariton Systems
• Exciton-polaritons in flatland: Controlling flatband properties in a Lieb lattice

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Onset of vortex clustering and inverse energy cascade in dissipative quantum fluids
• Reconfigurable quantum fluid molecules of bound states in the continuum
• Stable vortex solitons sustained by a localized gain in the cubic medium
• Antiferromagnetic Ising model in a triangular vortex lattice of quantum fluids of light
• Optomechanical parametric oscillation of a quantum light-fluid lattice
• Asynchronous Locking in Metamaterials of Fluids of Light and Sound
• Next nearest neighbour coupling with spinor polariton condensates
• Screening nearest-neighbor interactions in networks of exciton-polariton condensates through spin orbit coupling
• Dirac exciton-polariton condensates in photonic crystal gratings
• Microscopic theory of nonlinear phase space filling in polaritonic lattices
• Theory of Optomechanical Locking in Driven-Dissipative Coupled Polariton Condensates
• Steady-State Quantum Zeno Effect of Driven-Dissipative Bosons with Dynamical Mean-Field Theory
• Polaritonic Machine Learning for Graph-based Data Analysis
• Orbital Frontiers: Harnessing Higher Modes in Photonic Simulators
• Geometric control of hyperbolic exciton-polariton condensate dimers