Electrically controlled photonic circuits of field-induced dipolaritons with huge nonlinearities

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates an electrically-gated waveguide system for dipolar-polaritons that significantly enhances nonlinearities, enabling tunable photonic switches and potential quantum blockade at the single polariton level.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel electrically-controlled waveguide architecture for dipolar-polaritons with greatly improved nonlinearities and electrical tunability, advancing photonic circuit technology.

Findings

Enhanced nonlinearities by an order of magnitude compared to fixed dipoles

Demonstration of electrically-tuned polariton switch and transistor

Projection of quantum blockade feasibility at single polariton level

Abstract

Electrically controlled photonic circuits hold promise for information technologies with greatly improved energy efficiency and quantum information processing capabilities. However, weak nonlinearity and electrical response of typical photonic materials have been two critical challenges. Therefore hybrid electronic-photonic systems, such as semiconductor exciton-polaritons, have been intensely investigated for their potential to allow higher nonlinearity and electrical control, with limited success so far. Here we demonstrate an electrically-gated waveguide architecture for dipolar-polaritons that allows enhanced and electrically-controllable polariton nonlinearities, enabling an electrically-tuned reflecting switch (mirror) and transistor of the dipolar-polaritons. The polariton transistor displays blockade and anti-blockade by compressing a dilute dipolar-polariton pulse exhibiting very strong dipolar interactions. The large nonlinearities are explained using a simple density-dependent polarization field that very effectively screens the external electric field, with an order of magnitude enhancement of the nonlinearities as compared to fixed dipoles. We project that a quantum blockade at the single polariton level is feasible in such a device.