Makhonin, M. orcid.org/0000-0003-0457-9024, Delphan, A. orcid.org/0000-0002-1197-7736, Song, K.W. orcid.org/0000-0002-5867-5452 et al. (13 more authors) (2024) Nonlinear Rydberg exciton-polaritons in Cu2O microcavities. Light: Science & Applications, 13 (1). 47. ISSN 2095-5545
Abstract
Rydberg excitons (analogues of Rydberg atoms in condensed matter systems) are highly excited bound electron-hole states with large Bohr radii. The interaction between them as well as exciton coupling to light may lead to strong optical nonlinearity, with applications in sensing and quantum information processing. Here, we achieve strong effective photon–photon interactions (Kerr-like optical nonlinearity) via the Rydberg blockade phenomenon and the hybridisation of excitons and photons forming polaritons in a Cu2O-filled microresonator. Under pulsed resonant excitation polariton resonance frequencies are renormalised due to the reduction of the photon-exciton coupling with increasing exciton density. Theoretical analysis shows that the Rydberg blockade plays a major role in the experimentally observed scaling of the polariton nonlinearity coefficient as ∝ n4.4±1.8 for principal quantum numbers up to n = 7. Such high principal quantum numbers studied in a polariton system for the first time are essential for realisation of high Rydberg optical nonlinearities, which paves the way towards quantum optical applications and fundamental studies of strongly correlated photonic (polaritonic) states in a solid state system.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Microresonators; Nonlinear optics; Polaritons |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Physics and Astronomy (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ENGINEERING AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL EP/S030751/1 ENGINEERING AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL EP/V026496/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 20 Feb 2024 15:13 |
Last Modified: | 20 Feb 2024 15:13 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41377-024-01382-9 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:209327 |