Light-enhanced dipolar interactions between exciton polaritons

TL;DR

This paper investigates how light enhances interactions between dipolar exciton polaritons in semiconductor bilayers, revealing optimal conditions for strong photon correlations, especially in TMD bilayers in vacuum.

Contribution

It provides an exact calculation of dipolariton scattering considering hybridized excitons and shows how light enhances interactions more for long-range dipolar effects.

Findings

Light enhances dipolariton interactions more than non-dipolar polaritons.

Long-range dipolar interactions benefit more from light enhancement.

Maximum interactions occur in TMD bilayers in vacuum.

Abstract

We consider the scenario of excitons in a semiconductor bilayer that are strongly coupled to cavity photons, leading to the formation of dipolar exciton polaritons (dipolaritons). Using a realistic pseudopotential for the dipolar interactions, we exactly determine the scattering between dipolaritons, accounting for the hybridization between interlayer and intralayer excitons. Similar to conventional non-dipolar polaritons, we find that the light-matter coupling enhances the interactions between dipolaritons by forcing excitons to scatter at energies that would otherwise be forbidden in ordinary exciton-exciton collisions. However, we show that this light enhancement is larger for long-range dipolar interactions than for short-range intralayer interactions, and is sensitive to the (non-uniform) dielectric environment of the bilayer. Crucially, we find that the largest dipolariton interactions are achieved for transition metal dichalcogenide bilayers in vacuum. Our results thus reveal the optimal dipolariton setup for realizing strong photon correlations.