Demonstration of a polariton step potential by local variation of light-matter coupling in a van-der-Waals heterostructure

Abstract

The large oscillator strength of excitons in transition metal dichalcogenide layers facilitates the formation of exciton-polariton resonances for monolayers and van-der-Waals heterostructures embedded in optical microcavities. Here, we show, that locally changing the number of layers in a WSe2/hBN/WSe2 van-der-Waals heterostructure embedded in a monolithic, high-quality-factor cavity gives rise to a local variation of the coupling strength. This effect yields a polaritonic stair case potential, which we demonstrate at room temperature. Our result paves the way towards engineering local polaritonic potentials at length scales down to atomically sharp interfaces, based on purely modifying its real part contribution via the coherent light-matter coupling strength g.

References in corpus (10)

• Strong light-matter coupling in two-dimensional atomic crystals
• Observation of Superfluidity of Polaritons in Semiconductor Microcavities
• Direct observation of Dirac cones and a flatband in a honeycomb lattice for polaritons
• Exciton-polaritons in van der Waals heterostructures embedded in tunable microcavities
• Observation of Half Quantum Vortices in an Exciton-Polariton Condensate
• Two-dimensional semiconductors in the regime of strong light-matter coupling
• Room temperature Tamm-Plasmon Exciton-Polaritons with a WSe2 monolayer
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• A platform for electrically pumped polariton simulators and topological lasers
• Selective photoexcitation of exciton-polariton vortices

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Spatial coherence of room-temperature monolayer WSe${}_2$ exciton-polaritons in a trap
• Micro- Mechanical assembly of high-quality Fabry-Perot microcavities for the integration with two-dimensional materials
• Enhancing ground state population and macroscopic coherence of room-temperature WS${}_2$ polaritons through engineered confinement