Spontaneous patterns in coherently driven polariton microcavities

Abstract

We consider a polariton microcavity resonantly driven by two external lasers which simultaneously pump both lower and upper polariton branches at normal incidence. In this setup, we study the occurrence of instabilities of the pump-only solutions towards the spontaneous formation of patterns. Their appearance is a consequence of the spontaneous symmetry breaking of translational and rotational invariance due to interaction induced parametric scattering. We observe the evolution between diverse patterns which can be classified as single-pump, where parametric scattering occurs at the same energy as one of the pumps, and as two-pump, where scattering occurs at a different energy. For two-pump instabilities, stripe and chequerboard patterns become the dominant steadystate solutions because cubic parametric scattering processes are forbidden. This contrasts with the single-pump case, where hexagonal patterns are the most common arrangements. We study the possibility of controlling the evolution between different patterns. Our results are obtained within a linear stability analysis and are confirmed by finite size full numerical calculations.

Nonlinear polariton parametric emission in an atomically thin semiconductor based microcavity

“…In traditional inorganic semiconductor microcavities, demonstration of such a nonlinear phenomenon has opened and facilitated the investigation of fascinating exotic phenomena such as the formation of quantized vortices and persistent currents in a superfluid, solitons, bifurcations and localized patterns 11,[19][20][21][22][23][24] . Moreover, parametric scattering makes possible the generation of squeezed light and entangled states as well as the realization of new photonic architectures and devices.…”

Critical dynamics and tree-like spatiotemporal patterns in exciton-polariton condensates

“…Spatial pattern formation in polariton systems has been studied in a number of different configurations both theoretically and experimentally [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] . In this work, we investigate dynamical behavior close to the instability threshold in detail, and predict spatiotemporal pattern formation.…”

Artificial Life in an Exciton-Polariton Lattice

“…To give a few examples, a large body of work was focused on the creation and control of polariton solitons [2][3][4][5][6][7], which were conjectured to play a role in devices [8][9][10] with some soliton logic gates constructed [11]. In parallel, polaritons were found to form spatial patterns [12][13][14][15][16], where topologically stable structures were considered as a memory [17,18] and pattern transitions could effectively compose switches [19]. There has also been a growing interest in studying polaritons in periodic potentials [20], which have allowed the routing of polaritons [21,22], gap and lattice solitons [23][24][25], and the formation of spin-ordered patterns [26] for information processing.…”