Polaritonic Quantum Matter

TL;DR

Polaritons are hybrid light-matter quasiparticles that exhibit unique dispersion and nonlinear properties, enabling advances in spectroscopy, imaging, quantum simulations, and the creation of new quantum states of matter.

Contribution

This review synthesizes recent developments in polaritonic quantum matter across various physical platforms and explores their unifying principles and emerging phenomena.

Findings

Polaritons combine photonic and matter properties, leading to novel dispersion relations.

Recent advances include polaritonic imaging, cavity engineering, and topological effects.

Polaritonic systems enable new quantum states and nonlinear optical phenomena.

Abstract

Polaritons are quantum mechanical superpositions of photon states with elementary excitations in molecules and solids. The light-matter admixture causes a characteristic frequency-momentum dispersion shared by all polaritons irrespective of the microscopic nature of material excitations that could entail charge, spin, lattice or orbital effects. Polaritons retain the strong nonlinearities of their matter component and simultaneously inherit ray-like propagation of light. Polaritons prompt new properties, enable new opportunities for spectroscopy/imaging, empower quantum simulations and give rise to new forms of synthetic quantum matter. Here, we review the emergent effects rooted in polaritonic quasiparticles in a wide variety of their physical implementations. We present a broad portfolio of the physical platforms and phenomena of what we term polaritonic quantum matter. We discuss the unifying aspects of polaritons across different platforms and physical implementations and focus on recent developments in: polaritonic imaging, cavity electrodynamics and cavity materials engineering, topology and nonlinearities, as well as quantum polaritonics.