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Reconfigurable quantum fluid molecules of bound states in the continuum

Nature Physics volume 20, pages 61–67 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Topological bound states in the continuum are confined wave-mechanical objects that offer advantageous ways to enhance light–matter interactions in compact photonic devices. In particular, their large quality factor in the strong-coupling regime has recently enabled the demonstration of Bose–Einstein condensation of bound-state-in-the-continuum polaritons. Here we show that polariton condensation into a negative-mass bound state in the continuum exhibits interaction-induced state confinement, opening opportunities for optically reprogrammable molecular arrays of quantum fluids of light. We exploit this optical-trapping mechanism to demonstrate that such artificial molecular complexes show hybridization into macroscopic modes with unusual topological charge multiplicity. Additionally, we demonstrate the scalability of our technique by constructing extended mono- and diatomic chains of bound-state-in-the-continuum polariton fluids that display non-Hermitian band formation and the opening of a minigap. Our findings offer insights into large-scale, reprogrammable, driven, dissipative many-body systems in the strong-coupling regime.

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Fig. 1: The exciton-polariton BIC condensate in a quantum-well grating waveguide.
Fig. 2: BIC molecule condensate characterization.
Fig. 3: Momentum-space PL characteristics in the double-spot arrangement.
Fig. 4: 10-BIC condensate chain.

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The raw experimental data used in this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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The code used in this study is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

H.S. acknowledges the project no. 2022/45/P/ST3/00467 co-funded by the Polish National Science Centre and the European Union Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 945339; and the Icelandic Research Fund (Rannis), grant no. 239552-051. A.G., V.A., D.T., M.D., D.B. and D.S. acknowledge the Italian Ministry of University (MUR) for funding through the PRIN project ‘Interacting Photons in Polariton Circuits’—INPhoPOL (grant 2017P9FJBS), the project ‘Hardware implementation of a polariton neural network for neuromorphic computing’—Joint Bilateral Agreement CNR–RFBR (Russian Foundation for Basic Research)–Triennal Program 2021–2023, the MAECI project ‘Novel photonic platform for neuromorphic computing’, Joint Bilateral Project Italia–Polonia 2022–2023, PNRR MUR project: ‘National Quantum Science and Technology Institute’—NQSTI (PE0000023), PNRR MUR project: ‘Integrated Infrastructure Initiative in Photonic and Quantum Sciences’—I-PHOQS (IR0000016), and the project FISR–C.N.R. ‘Tecnopolo di nanotecnologia e fotonica per la medicina di precisione’—CUP B83B17000010001 and ‘Progetto Tecnopolo per la Medicina di precisione’, Deliberazione della Giunta Regionale n. 2117 del 21/11/2018. H.S.N. is funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) under the project POPEYE (ANR-17-CE24-0020) and the IDEXLYON from Université de Lyon, Scientific Breakthrough project TORE within the Programme Investissements d’Avenir (ANR-19-IDEX-0005). He is also supported by the Auvergne–Rhône–Alpes region in the framework of PAI2020 and the Vingroup Innovation Foundation (VINIF) annual research grant programme under Project Code VINIF.2021.DA00169. H.C.N. acknowledges the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation, project numbers 447948357 and 440958198), the Sino–German Center for Research Promotion (Project M-0294), the German Ministry of Education and Research (Project QuKuK, BMBF grant no. 16KIS1618K) and the ERC (Consolidator grant 683107/TempoQ). This research is funded in part by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s EPiQS Initiative, grant GBMF9615 to L.P., and by the National Science Foundation MRSEC grant DMR 2011750 to Princeton University. Work at the Molecular Foundry is supported by the Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the US Department of Energy under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231. We thank S. Dhuey for assistance with electron beam lithography and P. Cazzato for the technical support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CNR Nanotec, Institute of Nanotechnology, Lecce, Italy

    Antonio Gianfrate, Vincenzo Ardizzone, Maria Efthymiou-Tsironi, Dimitrios Trypogeorgos, Milena De Giorgi, Dario Ballarini & Daniele Sanvitto

  2. Science Institute, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland

    Helgi Sigurðsson

  3. Institute of Experimental Physics, Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

    Helgi Sigurðsson

  4. Naturwissenschaftlich-Technische Fakultät, Universität Siegen, Siegen, Germany

    Hai Chau Nguyen

  5. Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Fabrizio Riminucci

  6. PRISM, Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Kirk W. Baldwin & Loren N. Pfeiffer

  7. Univ Lyon, Ecole Centrale de Lyon, INSA Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CPE Lyon, CNRS, INL, Ecully, France

    Hai Son Nguyen

  8. Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), Paris, France

    Hai Son Nguyen

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Contributions

A.G. performed the experiments and the data analysis with the support of M.E.-T. and V.A. H.S., V.A. and A.G. edited the manuscript with the input of all the authors. L.N.P., K.W.B. and F.R. fabricated and postprocessed the sample. H.S., H.S.N. and H.C.N. provided the theoretical framework and reproduced the experimental results through numerical simulation. D.T. and M.D.G. provided insight on the physical processes and helped in the data interpretation. D.T. provided the code to control the setup. D.B. and D.S. supervised the work.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Helgi Sigurðsson or Dario Ballarini.

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Nature Physics thanks Edgar Cerda-Mendez, Huawen Xu and Michael Fraser for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–10 and Sections 1–9.

Supplementary Video 1

Energy-resolved photoluminescence reciprocal-space dynamic. Here we report the dynamical formation of the polariton Bloch band in the case of a regular (that is, mono-atomic) 10-spot chain. The horizontal blue lines mark the energy position of the BIC gap in absence of blueshift. The t = 0 is set at the arrival of the excitation laser.

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Gianfrate, A., Sigurðsson, H., Ardizzone, V. et al. Reconfigurable quantum fluid molecules of bound states in the continuum. Nat. Phys. 20, 61–67 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-023-02281-3

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