Backward Cherenkov radiation emitted by polariton solitons in a microcavity wire

D V Skryabin,J K Chana,L E Tapia Rodriguez,P M Walker,Y V Kartashov,M Sich,O A Egorov,B Royall,D N Krizhanovskii,M S Skolnick,E Clarke

doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01751-6

D V Skryabin, J K Chana + Show 9 more

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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01751-6

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Exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities form a highly nonlinear platform to study a variety of effects interfacing optical, condensed matter, quantum and statistical physics. We show that the complex polariton patterns generated by picosecond pulses in microcavity wire waveguides can be understood as the Cherenkov radiation emitted by bright polariton solitons, which is enabled by the unique microcavity polariton dispersion, which has momentum intervals with positive and negative group velocities. Unlike in optical fibres and semiconductor waveguides, we observe that the microcavity wire Cherenkov radiation is predominantly emitted with negative group velocity and therefore propagates backwards relative to the propagation direction of the emitting soliton. We have developed a theory of the microcavity wire polariton solitons and of their Cherenkov radiation and conducted a series of experiments, where we have measured polariton-soliton pulse compression, pulse breaking and emission of the backward Cherenkov radiation.

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Exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities form a highly nonlinear platform to study a variety of effects interfacing optical, condensed matter, quantum and statistical physics
We have introduced an approximate model that has exact soliton solutions and demonstrated the existence of the energy-momentum matching between the soliton and linear polariton waves resulting in the existence of the backward Cherenkov radiation emitted by the polariton solitons
In this work we have studied a one-dimensional microwire and demonstrated the fundamental process of backward Cherenkov radiation by one-dimensional solitons

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Introduction

Exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities form a highly nonlinear platform to study a variety of effects interfacing optical, condensed matter, quantum and statistical physics. In the photonic Cherenkov-like effect, an optical quasi-soliton pulse, not an electron, serves as the radiation emitter. We start developing our theory of the backward polariton Cherenkov radiation by introducing the complex amplitudes A± of the σ+ and σ− polarised photonic microcavity modes coupled to the amplitudes of the wave functions of the positive and negative spin-one coherent excitons ψ±47.

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