Room-Temperature Polariton Lasing in Semiconductor Microcavities

Christopoulos, Stavros; Högersthal, G. Baldassarri Höger von; Grundy, A. J. D.; Lagoudakis, Pavlos G.; Kavokin, A. V.; Baumberg, Jeremy J.; Christmann, Gabriel; Butté, R.; Feltin, E.; Carlin, J.-F.; Grandjean, N.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.98.126405

Cited by 943 publications

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“…1,2 Consequently, proposals for electrically pumped polariton lasers are a subject of much discussion in the literature. [3][4][5] For the realization of room-temperature polariton lasers and the optimization of their characteristics several requirements need to be satisfied.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Whispering-gallery exciton polaritons in submicron spheres

et al. 2009

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'Whispering-gallery exciton polaritons in submicron spheres. ', Physical Review B, 79 (24). p. 245322.Further information on publisher's website: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. We show that a semiconductor sphere with a radius comparable with the wavelength of light at the exciton resonance frequency can behave as a high-quality three-dimensional microcavity or "polariton dot." We obtain numerical results for gallium arsenide submicron spheres and demonstrate that, in contrast to a larger sphere or planar microcavity, they can simultaneously possess both large quality factor and high finesse. In the strongcoupling regime the Rabi splitting approaches the bulk polariton splitting.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Whispering-gallery exciton polaritons in submicron spheres

et al. 2009

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“…emergence of spontaneous coherence. Designing semiconductor structures with required characteristics and controlling the parameters of the exciton system gives an opportunity to study various types of exciton condensates.A condensate of exciton-polaritons was recently realized in semiconductor microcavities [9][10][11][12][13]. This condensate is characterized by a strong coupling of excitons to the optical field and a short lifetime of the polaritons.…”

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Spontaneous coherence in a cold exciton gas

High¹,

Leonard²,

Hammack³

et al. 2012

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Excitons, bound pairs of electrons and holes, form a model system to explore the quantum physics of cold bosons in solids. Cold exciton gases can be realized in a system of indirect excitons, which can cool down below the temperature of quantum degeneracy due to their long lifetimes. Here, we report on the measurement of spontaneous coherence in a gas of indirect excitons. We found that extended spontaneous coherence of excitons emerges in the region of the macroscopically ordered exciton state and in the region of vortices of linear polarization. The coherence length in these regions is much larger than in a classical gas, indicating a coherent state with a much narrower than classical exciton distribution in momentum space, characteristic of a condensate. We also observed phase singularities in the coherent exciton gas. Extended spontaneous coherence and phase singularities emerge when the exciton gas is cooled below a few Kelvin. Spontaneous coherence of excitonsIf bosonic particles are cooled down below the temperature of quantum degeneracy they can spontaneously form a coherent state in which individual matter waves synchronize and combine. Spontaneous coherence of matter waves forms the basis for a number of fundamental phenomena in physics, including superconductivity, superfluidity, and Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) [1][2][3][4][5]. Spontaneous coherence is the key characteristic of condensation in momentum space [6].Excitons are hydrogen-like bosons at low densities [7] and Cooper-pair-like bosons at high densities [8]. The bosonic nature of excitons allows for condensation in momentum space, i.e. emergence of spontaneous coherence. Designing semiconductor structures with required characteristics and controlling the parameters of the exciton system gives an opportunity to study various types of exciton condensates.A condensate of exciton-polaritons was recently realized in semiconductor microcavities [9][10][11][12][13]. This condensate is characterized by a strong coupling of excitons to the optical field and a short lifetime of the polaritons. Unlike BEC, equilibrium is not required for the polariton condensation and coherence in the polariton condensate forms due to a coherent optical field similar to coherence in lasers [14].There are intriguing theoretical predictions for a range of coherent states in cold exciton systems, including BEC [7], BCS-like condensation [8], charge-density-wave formation [15], and condensation with spontaneous timereversal symmetry breaking [16]. In these condensates, spontaneous coherence of exciton matter waves emerges below the temperature of quantum degeneracy.Since excitons are much lighter than atoms, quantum degeneracy can be achieved in excitonic systems at temperatures orders of magnitude higher than the microKelvin temperatures needed in atomic vapors [1, 2]. Exciton gases need be cooled down to a few Kelvin to enter the quantum regime. Although the temperature of the semiconductor crystal lattice T lat can be lowered well below 1 K in He-refrigerators, lower...

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“…Thus, a portion of the polariton laser research attention was transferred to wide-bandgap material systems, including GaN and ZnO, which provide a much higher exciton binding energy and oscillator strength for supporting stable roomtemperature (RT) operation. Thus far, the GaN-based polariton lasers have been demonstrated in planar MCs inserted with different types of excitonic structures including bulk GaN, 29 GaN/AlGaN multiple quantum wells (MQWs) 30 and GaN nanowires. 31 The exciton binding energy of the bulk GaN is comparable to the RT thermal energy of approximately 26 meV.…”

Section: Progress Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Strong light–matter interaction in ZnO microcavities

2013

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The strong light-matter interaction in ZnO-embedded microcavities has received great attention in recent years, due to its ability to generate the robust bosonic quasiparticles, exciton-polaritons, at or above room temperature. This review introduces the strong coupling effect in ZnO-based microcavities and describes the recent progress in this field. In addition, the report contains a systematic analysis of the room-temperature strong-coupling effects from relaxation to polariton lasing. The stable room temperature operation of polaritonic effects in a ZnO microcavity promises a wide range of practical applications in the future, such as ultra-low power consumption coherent light emitters in the ultraviolet region, polaritonic transport, and other fundamental of quantum optics in solid-state systems. Keywords: microcavity; polariton; strong coupling; ZnO INTRODUCTIONOver the past two decades, strong light-matter interactions in solidstate systems have garnered much attention for applications in novel photonics devices. The polariton is the key factor in the strong coupling phenomena: a new bosonic quasiparticle that is a hybrid between matter and light and exhibits promise for investigating various fascinating effects including dynamical Bose condensation, 1-4 superfluidity 5,6 and quantized vortices. 7-10 Semiconductor microcavities (MCs), which simultaneously offer good optical confinement with a small mode volume for the photonics portion and an excitonic layer for the matter portion of the strong coupling, are regarded as promising candidates for demonstrating and manipulating strong light-matter coupling in solid-state systems. 11 Because the semiconductor MCs undergo a strong coupling regime, the coupling rate between the bared exciton modes and the confined photon modes is faster than their dissipation rates. Compared with weakly coupled MCs, the rapid exchange rate in strongly coupled MCs renders the energy transfer between the excitons and photons reversible and reduces the possibility of energy dissipation through non-radiative channels, which results in a higher internal quantum efficiency. The new eigenstates generated from the strong exciton-photon coupling are called exciton-polaritons 12 and exhibit a relatively small effective mass compared with atomic hydrogen, tunable dispersion curves, and the bosonic statistics at low densities.Given the aforementioned properties, many phenomena have been extensively studied in polariton systems, including ultra-low threshold polariton lasing, 13 polariton parametric oscillation 14-17 and polaritonic circuits. 18 The matter characteristic of the polaritons allows them to scatter with electrons, phonons and polaritons, then to condense in the coherent ground state. The laser-like light emission from a coherent polariton ground state, the so-called polariton laser, does not require the population inversion condition required by conventional

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Room-Temperature Polariton Lasing in Semiconductor Microcavities

Cited by 943 publications

References 27 publications

Whispering-gallery exciton polaritons in submicron spheres

Whispering-gallery exciton polaritons in submicron spheres

Spontaneous coherence in a cold exciton gas

Strong light–matter interaction in ZnO microcavities

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