Abstract

Exciton–polaritons are mixed light–matter particles offering a versatile solid state platform to study many-body physical effects. In this work, we demonstrate an electrically controlled polariton laser, in a compact, easy-to-fabricate and integrable configuration, based on a semiconductor waveguide. Interestingly, we show that polariton lasing can be achieved in a system without a global minimum in the polariton energy-momentum dispersion. The cavity modes for the laser emission are obtained by adding couples of specifically designed diffraction gratings on top of the planar waveguide, forming an in-plane Fabry–Perot cavity. It is due to the waveguide geometry that we can apply a transverse electric field to finely tune the laser energy and quality factor of the cavity modes. Remarkably, we exploit the system sensitivity to the applied electric field to achieve an electrically controlled population of coherent polaritons. The precise control that can be reached with the manipulation of the grating properties and of the electric field provides strong advantages to this device in terms of miniaturization and integrability, two main features for the future development of coherent sources for polaritonic technologies.

Highlights

  • A semiconductor system in which a photon emitted from an active medium has a larger probability of being reabsorbed than that of escaping out of the optical resonator is said to be in strong coupling

  • Most importantly, using an electric field applied in the direction perpendicular to the WG plane, we demonstrate real-time tunability of the emission wavelength

  • We demonstrated the design and realization of a micrometer-sized laser in a GaAs/AlGaAs polariton WG by using two metallic gratings at a controlled distance on top of the slab WG, in order to form a FP cavity that confines the photonic field in one dimension

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Summary

Introduction

A semiconductor system in which a photon emitted from an active medium has a larger probability of being reabsorbed than that of escaping out of the optical resonator is said to be in strong coupling. This condition accounts for the formation of the so-called exciton polariton: a light–matter quasi-particle resulting from the hybridization between an electromagnetic cavity mode and an exciton dipole in a semiconductor [1]. Peculiar features of polaritons such as long coherence time and high nonlinearities are chased for the realization of integrated optical elements [10]. The generation and manipulation of polaritons at the single or few particles level, have been reported, in an effort to assess the potential of these systems as a platform for quantum information processing

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