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Polariton Pattern Formation and Photon Statistics of the Associated Emission

C. E. Whittaker1,*, B. Dzurnak1, O. A. Egorov2, G. Buonaiuto1, P. M. Walker1, E. Cancellieri1,3, D. M. Whittaker1, E. Clarke4, S. S. Gavrilov5 et al.

M. S. Skolnick1 and D. N. Krizhanovskii1,†

  • 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S3 7RH, United Kingdom
  • 2Technische Physik, Wilhelm-Conrad-Röntgen-Research Center for Complex Material Systems, Universität Würzburg, Am Hubland D-97074, Würzburg, Germany
  • 3Department of Physics, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YB, United Kingdom
  • 4EPSRC National Epitaxy Facility, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 3JD, United Kingdom
  • 5Institute of Solid State Physics, RAS, Chernogolovka 142432, Russia

  • *cewhittaker1@sheffield.ac.uk
  • †d.krizhanovskii@sheffield.ac.uk
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Phys. Rev. X 7, 031033 – Published 21 August, 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.7.031033

Abstract

We report on the formation of a diverse family of transverse spatial polygon patterns in a microcavity polariton fluid under coherent driving by a blue-detuned pump. Patterns emerge spontaneously as a result of energy-degenerate polariton-polariton scattering from the pump state to interfering high-order vortex and antivortex modes, breaking azimuthal symmetry. The interplay between a multimode parametric instability and intrinsic optical bistability leads to a sharp spike in the value of second-order coherence g(2)(0) of the emitted light, which we attribute to the strongly superlinear kinetics of the underlying scattering processes driving the formation of patterns. We show numerically by means of a linear stability analysis how the growth of parametric instabilities in our system can lead to spontaneous symmetry breaking, predicting the formation and competition of different pattern states in good agreement with experimental observations.

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Popular Summary

Self-organizing patterns are ubiquitous in nature and can be seen on scales ranging from atomic to astronomical. Examples include the growth of atomic crystals, flocking behavior in birds, and spiral waves that encircle galaxies. This universal phenomenon can also occur in certain nonlinear optical systems, resulting in patterns of light created by the self-organization of photons in space. The dynamical instabilities that can break the symmetry of an optical field and lead to patterns may also cause enhanced and suppressed fluctuations of photons in space and time, which have so far been studied quite separately from pattern formation. We studied a quantum fluid of polaritons—hybrid particles composed of photons coupled to electric dipoles—and discovered the formation of novel patterns as well as new insight into fluctuations in the optical field.

Specifically, we observed the spontaneous generation of vortex-antivortex pairs with large winding numbers, previously unreported in other pattern-forming systems (optical or otherwise). A diverse family of polygon patterns arose in the fluid because of polariton-polariton scattering from an azimuthally symmetric pump to quantized vortices. We also characterized the intensity and noise fluctuations of the optical field, revealing explosive underlying dynamics manifested by a sharp spike in the value of the second-order correlation function and a huge increase in signal noise.

We expect that our results will lead to further studies of polariton transverse effects and quantum statistics, which are important for fundamental science and applications such as optical signal processing and random number generation.

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Phys. Rev. X 7, 031033– Published 21 August, 2017
  • Received 9 December 2016
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