Spatial patterns of dissipative polariton solitons in semiconductor microcavities

TL;DR

This paper reports the first observation of propagating multi-soliton patterns in semiconductor microcavities, demonstrating control over soliton arrays and their potential for ultrafast optical signal processing.

Contribution

It introduces the experimental observation and analysis of multi-peak polariton soliton patterns and their underlying mechanisms in semiconductor microcavities.

Findings

Observation of up to 5 solitons in arrays

Control of soliton number via laser pulse parameters

Good agreement between experiments and numerical models

Abstract

Semiconductor microcavities operating in the polaritonic regime are highly non-linear, high speed systems due to the unique half-light, half-matter nature of polaritons. Here, we report for the first time the observation of propagating multi-soliton polariton patterns consisting of multi-peak structures either along (x) or perpendicular to (y) the direction of propagation. Soliton arrays of up to 5 solitons are observed, with the number of solitons controlled by the size or power of the triggering laser pulse. The break-up along the x direction occurs due to interplay of bistability, negative effective mass and polariton-polariton scattering, while in the y direction the break-up results from nonlinear phase-dependent interactions of propagating fronts. We show the experimental results are in good agreement with numerical modelling. Our observations are a step towards ultrafast all-optical signal processing using sequences of solitons as bits of information.