Polariton-mediated binding of anti-aligned dipolar excitons

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the strong coupling of electrically tunable dipolar excitons in a 2D material with photonic modes, creating hybrid polaritons that can be reconfigured in situ for advanced quantum photonic applications.

Contribution

It introduces a method to hybridize and control dipolar excitons in a photonic crystal, enabling in situ reconfiguration of polariton states and nonlinear interactions.

Findings

Hybrid polaritons formed from dipolar excitons and cavity photons.

In situ reconfiguration of polariton wavefunctions via electric tuning.

Observation of non-monotonic Stark shifts in polariton branches.

Abstract

Interacting bosonic quasiparticles are the cornerstone for exploring many-body physics and nonlinear quantum phenomena in correlated light-matter systems. Strongly interacting dipolar excitons in van der Waals heterostructures have attracted significant interest due to their out-of-plane electric dipole moments and high tunability via the quantum-confined Stark effect (QCSE). However, leveraging these tunable dipolar excitons in strongly coupled exciton-photon systems to explore exotic many-body physics and macroscopic quantum phenomena remains experimentally elusive. Here, we report the strong coupling of dipolar excitons in a gated bilayer MoS2 device integrated with a one-dimensional photonic crystal hosting bound-states-in-continuum (BIC). The resulting polaritons hybridize cavity photons with a coherent superposition of two electrically tunable anti-aligned dipolar excitons, effectively binding them into composite quasiparticle states. By tuning the dipolar excitons into non-degenerate states via the QCSE, we realize in situ reconfiguration of the polariton wavefunction and observe an emergent polariton branch exhibiting non-monotonic Stark shifts. Notably, these tunable polaritons allow for customized control over nonlinear interactions through distinct excitonic hybridization and dipolar configurations. This in situ tunability offers a scalable pathway toward electrically programmable quantum fluids of light and correlated polariton phases in on-chip photonic integrated circuits.