Discrete chiral ballistic polariton laser

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel, optically tunable chiral exciton-polariton microlaser that generates coherent light with variable orbital angular momentum, leveraging spin-dependent interactions and structured pumping in a simple planar cavity.

Contribution

It presents a new discrete chiral polariton laser that produces reconfigurable OAM without complex cavity patterning, using spin-dependent interactions and symmetry-breaking pumping.

Findings

Achieves coherent light with variable OAM through structured pumping.

Demonstrates spontaneous high-charge circulating currents locked with pump polarization.

Operates in a simple planar cavity without specialized patterning.

Abstract

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light appears when the phase of an electromagnetic wavefront winds around its direction of propagation, also known as optical vorticity. Contrary to the binary-valued photon spin, the integer-valued optical vortex charge is unbounded with many advantages in optical communication and trapping and enhancing the capacity of data encoding and multiplexing. Singular optoelectronic and chiroptic quantum technologies rely on the development of coherent and compact light sources of well-defined and reconfigurable OAM. We propose an optically tunable discrete chiral exciton-polariton microlaser that leverages strong spin-dependent polariton interactions, structured pumping, and inherent cavity photon spin-to-angular momentum conversion to emit coherent nonlinear light of variable OAM. By choosing pumping patterns with broken inversion symmetry in the microcavity plane we invoke geometric frustration between spinor ballistic condensates which spontaneously obtain a high-charge circulating current locked with the pump polarization. Our optically configurable system requires only a planar cavity thus avoiding the need for specialized irreversible cavity patterning or metasurfaces.