Polarization shaping of Poincaré beams by polariton oscillations

Abstract

We propose theoretically and demonstrate experimentally the generation of light pulses whose polarization varies temporally to cover selected areas of the Poincaré sphere with both tunable swirling speed and total duration (1 ps and 10 ps, respectively, in our implementation). The effect relies on the Rabi oscillations of two polariton polarized fields excited by two counter-polarized and delayed pulses. The superposition of the oscillating fields result in the precession of the Stokes vector of the emitted light while polariton lifetime imbalance results in its drift from a circle of controllable radius on the Poincaré sphere to a single point at long times. The positioning of the initial circle and final point allows to engineer the type of polarization spanning, including a full sweeping of the Poincaré sphere. The universality and simplicity of the scheme should allow for the deployment of time-varying full-Poincaré polarization fields in a variety of platforms, timescales, and regimes.

Pulse, polarization and topology shaping of polariton fluids

“…In very recent works, 16,17 thanks to significant progress in both the quality of the structures and in the laboratory state of the art, we have been able to both observe and control the microcavity polariton Rabi dynamics. We can span from Rabi oscillating configurations to eigenstate superpositions, and control them by multiple optical pulses that can amplify or switch states.…”

Polarization time of unpolarized light

“…Further, the quantum-mechanical selection rules governing atomic and molecular transitions depend essentially on the polarization state of light [17,18], while the fluctuations in fluorescence emission of single emitters yield information on their nanoscopic environment [19]. The polarization time can also be used to characterize pulsed beams, such as Poincaré beams, in which the polarization can go through all possible states within each pulse [20], and beams created by cascade emission of pairs of orthogonally polarized photons by quantum dots [21].…”

Slow light in semiconductor quantum dots: Effects of non-Markovianity and correlation of dephasing reservoirs

“…The influence of the surroundings leads to dephasing and to energy loss of the semiconductor nanostructure. The most common dephasings and energy losses may be described by Markovian master equations usually written down in the so-called Lindblad form 19 (see, for example, the recent works by Colas et al 20 and Marques et al 21 ). Markovianity arises when correlations of dephasing or dissipative reservoirs rapidly decay on the typical time-scale of the nanostructure dynamics.…”