Microcavity polaritons for topological photonics

Abstract

Microcavity polaritons are light-matter quasiparticles that arise from the strong coupling between excitons and photons confined in a semiconductor microcavity. They typically operate at visible or near visible wavelengths. They combine the properties of confined electromagnetic fields, including a sizeable spin-orbit coupling, and the sensitivity to external magnetic fields and particle interactions inherited from their partly matter nature. These features make polaritons an excellent platform to study topological phases in photonics in one and two dimensional lattices, which band properties can be directly accessed using standard optical tools. In this review we describe the main properties of microcavity polaritons and the main observations in the field of topological photonics, which include, among others, lasing in topological edge states, the implementation of a polariton Chern insulator under an external magnetic field and the direct measurement of fundamental quantities such as the quantum geometric tensor and winding numbers in one- and two-dimensional lattices. Polariton interactions open exciting perspectives for the study of nonlinear topological phases.

19 pages, 8 figures, review article

References in corpus (26)

• Classification of topological insulators and superconductors in three spatial dimensions
• Quantum fluids of light
• The Valley Hall Effect in MoS2 Transistors
• Scheme to Achieve Silicon Topological Photonics
• Observation of Superfluidity of Polaritons in Semiconductor Microcavities
• Excitations in a non-equilibrium Bose-Einstein condensate of exciton-polaritons
• Topological Polaritons
• Non-equilibrium quantum condensation in an incoherently pumped dissipative system
• Polariton $\mathbb{Z}$ Topological Insulator
• Polarization multistability of cavity polaritons
• Engineering spin-orbit coupling for photons and polaritons in microstructures
• Topological Polaritons and Excitons in Garden Variety Systems
• Spin-orbit coupling and optical spin Hall effect in photonic graphene
• Zero modes and the edge states of the honeycomb lattice
• Proposal for a Mesoscopic Optical Berry-Phase Interferometer
• Stability of vortex solitons in thermal nonlinear media with cylindrical symmetry
• Polariton condensation in $S$- and $P$-flatbands in a two-dimensional Lieb lattice
• Electrically tunable artificial gauge potential for polaritons
• Manipulation of edge states in microwave artificial graphene
• Magnetic field tuning of exciton polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity
• Anisotropic Optical Spin Hall Effect in Semiconductor Microcavities
• Spontaneous and Superfluid Chiral Edge States in Exciton-Polariton Condensates
• Interface states in polariton topological insulators
• Photonic Versus Electronic Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect
• Angular dependence of giant Zeeman effect for semi-magnetic cavity polaritons
• One-way reflection-free exciton-polariton spin filtering channel