Acoustic Black Hole in a Stationary Hydrodynamic Flow of Microcavity Polaritons

Abstract

We report an experimental study of superfluid hydrodynamic effects in a one-dimensional polariton fluid flowing along a laterally patterned semiconductor microcavity and hitting a micron-sized engineered defect. At high excitation power, superfluid propagation effects are observed in the polariton dynamics; in particular, a sharp acoustic horizon is formed at the defect position, separating regions of sub- and supersonic flow. Our experimental findings are quantitatively reproduced by theoretical calculations based on a generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation. Promising perspectives to observe Hawking radiation via photon correlation measurements are illustrated.

Polariton lasing in high-quality selenide-based micropillars in the strong coupling regime

“…4 Refined etching and microstructuring techniques have been developed for GaAs-based microcavity, allowing the fabrication of high quality micropillars, 5,6 mesas, 7 as well as advanced polaritonic circuits elements like waveguides, interferometers, optical gates, [8][9][10] and lattices with direct applications for quantum simulations. [11][12][13][14][15] This approach is likely to be successful in the upcoming years; however, for practical use, its drawback is to be stuck to cryogenic temperatures. A way around this problem is the use of large bandgap materials, where the exciton binding energy is larger, and hence stable at room temperature.…”

Quantum vacuum emission from a refractive-index front

“…Until recently, proposed analog systems to test Hawking's prediction by experiments suffered from a low characteristic temperature [3,[6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. In 2008, Philbin et al [13] demonstrated the feasibility of creating artificial event horizons with a moving refractive-index front (RIF) in dispersive optical media.…”

Non-Linear Stationary Solutions in Realistic Models for Analog Black-Hole Lasers

“…This pioneering work opened the door to the study of gravitational problems in the laboratory, and since then, many analog setups have been proposed in systems as different as Fermi gases [5], ion rings [6], polaritons [7] or, in a classical context, surface waves in a water tank [8].…”