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Nonlinear interactions in an organic polariton condensate

Nature Materials volume 13, pages 271–278 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Under the right conditions, cavity polaritons form a macroscopic condensate in the ground state. The fascinating nonlinear behaviour of this condensate is largely dictated by the strength of polariton–polariton interactions. In inorganic semiconductors, these result principally from the Coulomb interaction between Wannier–Mott excitons. Such interactions are considerably weaker for the tightly bound Frenkel excitons characteristic of organic semiconductors and were notably absent in the first reported demonstration of organic polariton lasing. In this work, we demonstrate the realization of an organic polariton condensate, at room temperature, in a microcavity containing a thin film of 2,7-bis[9,9-di(4-methylphenyl)-fluoren-2-yl]-9,9-di(4-methylphenyl)fluorene. On reaching threshold, we observe the spontaneous formation of a linearly polarized condensate, which exhibits a superlinear power dependence, long-range order and a power-dependent blueshift: a clear signature of Frenkel polariton interactions.

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Figure 1: Materials and experimental structure.
Figure 2: Angle-resolved reflectivity.
Figure 3: Angle-resolved photoluminescence.
Figure 4: Pump fluence and polarization dependence.
Figure 5: Temporally resolved polariton emission.
Figure 6: Spatial coherence.

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Acknowledgements

S.K-C. and S.A.M. acknowledge financial support from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council through the Active Plasmonics programme grant (EP/H000917/1). K.S.D. and R.M. acknowledge support from the European ITN project Icarus (237900). S.A.M. and K.S.D. gratefully acknowledge partial support from a Leverhulme Trust Embedding of Emerging Disciplines grant. The authors would like to thank L. Mazza for a critical reading of the manuscript and I. Carusotto for helpful comments regarding ref. 16. S.K-C. thanks Imperial College London for the award of a Junior Research Fellowship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK

    K. S. Daskalakis, S. A. Maier, R. Murray & S. Kéna-Cohen

  2. Department of Engineering Physics, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Montréal, Quebec H3C 3A7, Canada,

    S. Kéna-Cohen

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  1. K. S. Daskalakis
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Contributions

K.S.D. fabricated and characterized the TDAF microcavities. S.K-C. conceived the project, designed the structures and guided the experiments. K.S.D. and S.K-C. co-wrote the manuscript, and S.A.M. and R.M. contributed to the draft. All authors contributed to analysis of the data.

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Correspondence to S. Kéna-Cohen.

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Daskalakis, K., Maier, S., Murray, R. et al. Nonlinear interactions in an organic polariton condensate. Nature Mater 13, 271–278 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3874

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