Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Emergence of quantum correlations from interacting fibre-cavity polaritons

Nature Materials volume 18, pages 213–218 (2019)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Over the past decade, exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities have revealed themselves as one of the richest realizations of a light-based quantum fluid1, subject to fascinating new physics and potential applications2,3,4,5,6. For instance, in the regime of large two-body interactions, polaritons can be used to manipulate the quantum properties of a light field7,8,9. In this work, we report on the emergence of quantum correlations in laser light transmitted through a fibre-cavity polariton system. We observe a dispersive shape of the autocorrelation function around the polariton resonance that indicates the onset of this regime. The weak amplitude of these correlations indicates a state that still remains far from a low-photon-number state. Nonetheless, given the underlying physical mechanism7, our work opens up the prospect of eventually using polaritons to turn laser light into single photons.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Fig. 1: Polariton excitation ladder and experimental set-up.
Fig. 2: Anticrossing of the polariton states and lifetimes.
Fig. 3: Quantum-correlated photons with cavity-exciton detuning.
Fig. 4: Polariton–polariton interaction constant.

Data availability

All data presented in this work are available on request from the authors.

References

  1. Carusotto, I. & Ciuti, C. Quantum fluids of light. Rev. Mod. Phys. 85, 299–366 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Berloff, N. G. et al. Realizing the classical XY Hamiltonian in polariton simulators. Nat. Mater. 16, 1120–1126 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Jacqmin, T. et al. Direct observation of Dirac cones and a flatband in a honeycomb lattice for polaritons. Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 116402 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Baboux, F. et al. Bosonic condensation and disorder-induced localization in a flat band. Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 066402 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Dagvadorj, G. et al. Nonequilibrium phase transition in a two-dimensional driven open quantum system. Phys. Rev. X 5, 041028 (2015).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Klembt, S., Stepanov, P., Klein, T., Minguzzi, A. & Richard, M. Thermal decoherence of a nonequilibrium polariton quantum fluid. Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 035301 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Verger, A., Ciuti, C. & Carusotto, I. Polariton quantum blockade in a photonic dot. Phys. Rev. B 73, 193306 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Boulier, T. et al. Polariton-generated intensity squeezing in semiconductor micropillars. Nat. Commun. 5, 3260 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Cuevas, Á. et al. First observation of the quantized exciton-polariton field and effect of interactions on a single polariton. Sci. Adv. 4, eaao6814 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Savasta, S., Stefano, O. D., Savona, V. & Langbein, W. Quantum complementarity of microcavity polaritons. Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 246401 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Amo, A. et al. Exciton-polariton spin switches. Nat. Photon. 4, 361–366 (2010).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Birnbaum, K. M. et al. Photon blockade in an optical cavity with one trapped atom. Nature 436, 87–90 (2005).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Lang, C. et al. Observation of resonant photon blockade at microwave frequencies using correlation function measurements. Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 243601 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Liebisch, T. C., Reinhard, A., Berman, P. R. & Raithel, G. Atom counting statistics in ensembles of interacting Rydberg atoms. Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 253002 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Jia, N. et al. A strongly interacting polaritonic quantum dot. Nat. Phys. 14, 550–554 (2018).

  16. Faraon, A. et al. Coherent generation of non-classical light on a chip via photon-induced tunnelling and blockade. Nat. Phys. 4, 859–863 (2008).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Reinhard, A. et al. Strongly correlated photons on a chip. Nat. Photon. 6, 93–96 (2012).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Walker, P. M. et al. Dark solitons in high velocity waveguide polariton fluids. Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 097403 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Deveaud, B. et al. Excitonic effects in the luminescence of quantum wells. Chem. Phys. 318, 104–117 (2005).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Besga, B. et al. Polariton boxes in a tunable fiber cavity. Phys. Rev. Appl. 3, 014008 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Reitzenstein, S. et al. AlAs/GaAs micropillar cavities with quality factors exceeding 150.000. Appl. Phys. Lett. 90, 251109 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Wood, A., Vidal, X., Muñoz-Matutano, G. & Volz, T. Non-invasive zero delay calibration of Hanbury Brown and Twiss interferometer. Measurement https://doi.org/10.1016/j.measurement.2019.01.079 (2019).

  23. Amo, A. et al. Superfluidity of polaritons in semiconductor microcavities. Nat. Phys. 5, 805–810 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. Ferrier, L. et al. Interactions in confined polariton condensates. Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 126401 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Delteil, A. et al. Towards polariton blockade of confined exciton-polaritons. Nat. Mater. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0282-y (2019).

  26. Casteels, W., Rota, R., Storme, F. & Ciuti, C. Probing photon correlations in the dark sites of geometrically frustrated cavity lattices. Phys. Rev. A 93, 043833 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Carusotto, I. et al. Fermionized photons in an array of driven dissipative nonlinear cavities. Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 033601 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  28. Miller, D. A. B. Are optical transistors the logical next step?. Nat. Photon. 4, 3–5 (2010).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  29. Noh, C. & Angelakis, D. G. Quantum simulations and many-body physics with light. Rep. Prog. Phys. 80, 016401 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Hadfield, R. H. Single-photon detectors for optical quantum information applications. Nat. Photon. 3, 696–705 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank S. Martin and D. Taylor from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (Lindfield – New South Wales) for their technical support. This work was funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (CE110001013 and CE170100009). A.L., J.B., A.A. and M.R. acknowledge support from the French Agence National de la Recherche (contract no. ANR-16-CE30-0021).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Guillermo Muñoz-Matutano, Andrew Wood, Mattias Johnsson.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Guillermo Muñoz-Matutano, Andrew Wood, Mattias Johnsson, Xavier Vidal, Ben Q. Baragiola, Andreas Reinhard, Benjamin Besga, Maxime Richard & Thomas Volz

  2. ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Guillermo Muñoz-Matutano, Andrew Wood, Mattias Johnsson, Xavier Vidal, Ben Q. Baragiola, Andreas Reinhard, Benjamin Besga & Thomas Volz

  3. ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, School of Science, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Ben Q. Baragiola

  4. Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies, CNRS (C2N), Universities Paris-Sud and Paris-Saclay, Palaiseau, France

    Aristide Lemaître & Jacqueline Bloch

  5. Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 8523, PhLAM - Physique des Lasers Atomes et Molécules, Lille, France

    Alberto Amo

  6. Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP, Institut Néel, Grenoble, France

    Gilles Nogues, Benjamin Besga & Maxime Richard

Authors
  1. Guillermo Muñoz-Matutano
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Andrew Wood
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Mattias Johnsson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Xavier Vidal
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Ben Q. Baragiola
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Andreas Reinhard
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Aristide Lemaître
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Jacqueline Bloch
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Alberto Amo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Gilles Nogues
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  11. Benjamin Besga
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  12. Maxime Richard
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  13. Thomas Volz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

G.M.-M. and A.W. carried out the spectroscopy and photon correlation experiments and analysed the data. M.J., with the help of B.Q.B., implemented the master equation model and contributed to the analysis of the data. G.M.-M., A.W. and M.J. have equally contributed to this research. X.V. built the spectroscopy set-up. A.R. and B.B. built the cavity microscope and designed the laser machining system for making the fibre cavities. A.L., J.B. and A.A. provided the QW sample and discussed the underlying polariton physics. G.N. carried out the finite-elements simulation of the cavity mode. M.R. and T.V. conceived the central idea of the work and related experiments, supervised the experimental work and contributed to discussions. The manuscript was written by G.M.-M., M.J., M.R. and T.V. with varying contributions from all other authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Guillermo Muñoz-Matutano or Thomas Volz.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Sections 1–7, Supplementary Figures 1–11, Supplementary References 1–14

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Muñoz-Matutano, G., Wood, A., Johnsson, M. et al. Emergence of quantum correlations from interacting fibre-cavity polaritons. Nature Mater 18, 213–218 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0281-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0281-z

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing