Laussy, Fabrice

Tuesday July 30, 2013
Time: 11:00
Place: ETH Science City, HPF G6
Host:  Atac Imamoglu

Polariton-powered devices: lasers, superfluids and superconductors

Fabrice Laussy
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain

Strong light-matter coupling allows to combine properties of light (high degree of coherence, slow mass, etc.) with those of matter (nonlinearities, interactions, etc.) resulting in particles (polaritons) that exhibit quantum behaviours in semiconductor structures and at high temperatures [1]. In this talk, we will present a few configurations that take advantage of strong light-matter interaction to engineer quantum devices. Namely, we will present i) N-photon emitters, that release energy in bundles of N photon(s) for a tunable integer N, ii) polariton fluid devices where a superflow of polaritons is used instead of electrons [3] and iii) polariton superconductors, where a polariton field supplement phonons to revisit the BCS mechanism à la Ginzburg [4]. Time allowing, we will also overview the theory of frequency resolved photon correlations [5], that should allow to tweak and optimise such quantum devices.

[1] Kavokin, Baumberg, Malpuech & Laussy, "Microcavities", Oxford, University Press (2011).
[2] C. Sanchez Muñoz et al., arXiv:1306.1578 (2013).
[3] A. Amo et al., Nature 457, 291 (2009); D Sanvitto et al., Nat. Phys. 6, 527 (2010) L. Dominici et al., unpublished.
[4] F.P. Laussy et al., PRL 104, 106402 (2010); F.P. Laussy et al., J. Nanophot. 6, 064502-1-064502-22 (2012).
[5] del Valle et al., PRL 109, 183601 (2012); Gonzalez-Tudela et al., NJP 15, 033036 (2013).