Polaritons articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Band engineering in optics allows the design of unconventional forms of light with potential optoelectronic applications. Here, the authors realize slow-light intercavity polaritons in an array of coupled cavities, the photonic architecture enables the spatial segregation of photons and excitons

    • Yesenia A. García Jomaso
    • , Brenda Vargas
    •  & Giuseppe Pirruccio
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Miniaturized and efficient optical modulators are desired for data transmission, processing and communication. Here, the authors report the fabrication of exciton-polariton Mach–Zehnder modulators based on thin WS2 waveguides with a footprint of ~30 μm², modulation ratio up to −6.20 dB and nanosecond response times.

    • Seong Won Lee
    • , Jong Seok Lee
    •  & Su-Hyun Gong
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Polaritons, light-matter hybridized quasiparticles, are the fundamental excitation of strong coupling systems and are widely applicable in information technologies. Here the authors applied the concept of time-of-flight measurement in terahertz induced second harmonic generation experiments in various systems to comprehensively study the dispersion relation of phonon-polaritons and reveal potential spin-lattice couplings.

    • Tianchuang Luo
    • , Batyr Ilyas
    •  & Nuh Gedik
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors show an original approach to achieve strong light-matter interaction harnessing the coupling between plasmonic resonators and the Landau resonances of an underlying quantum well, demonstrating remarkably high coupling strengths.

    • Joshua Mornhinweg
    • , Laura Katharina Diebel
    •  & Christoph Lange
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors report the generation and manipulation of transient hyperbolic plasmons in black phosphorus via ultrafast photocarrier injection, demonstrating a topological transition of the non-equilibrium iso-frequency contours and the coexistence of different transient plasmonic modes.

    • Rao Fu
    • , Yusong Qu
    •  & Jianing Chen
  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    In this Perspective, the authors illustrate the physics of hyperbolic polaritons in anisotropic 2D and 1D materials, proposing new potential material candidates, forward looking opportunities and technological applications.

    • Hongwei Wang
    • , Anshuman Kumar
    •  & Tony Low
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hyperbolic exciton polaritons (HEPs) are anisotropic light-matter excitations with promising applications, but their steady-state observation is challenging. Here, the authors report experimental evidence of HEPs in a van der Waals magnet, CrSBr, via cryogenic infrared near-field microscopy.

    • Francesco L. Ruta
    • , Shuai Zhang
    •  & D. N. Basov
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors uncover a coherent, long-range transport of excitons in organic semiconductors that are strongly coupled to spatially structured plasmon fields by tracing ultrafast Rabi oscillations using two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy.

    • Daniel Timmer
    • , Moritz Gittinger
    •  & Christoph Lienau
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The photonic applications of hyperbolic phonon polaritons (HPhPs) in anisotropic van der Waals materials are currently limited by their low tunability. Here, the authors report the static and ultrafast wavevector modulation of HPhPs in hexagonal boron nitride by tuning the plasma frequency of doped semiconductor substrates.

    • Mingze He
    • , Joseph R. Matson
    •  & Joshua D. Caldwell
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recent experiments have shown the formation of ferroelectric domains in twisted van der Waals bilayers. Here, the authors report near-field infrared nano-imaging and nano-photocurrent measurements to investigate ferroelectricity in minimally twisted WSe2 by visualizing the plasmonic and photo-thermoelectric response of an adjacent graphene monolayer.

    • Shuai Zhang
    • , Yang Liu
    •  & D. N. Basov
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Exciton-polaritons are hybrid light matter quasi-particles, which can occur in systems exhibiting strong light-matter coupling. Here, Wang et al study exciton-polaritons in the van der Waals antiferromagnetic material, CrSBr, coupled to a Tamm plasmon microcavity and find the exciton-polaritons are sensitive to and can be tuned by the magnetic order of CrSBr.

    • Tingting Wang
    • , Dingyang Zhang
    •  & Wenjing Liu
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Photonic, electronic and lattice resonances in patterned semiconductor microcavities are tailored to demonstrate coherent bidirectional microwave-to-optical conversion via phonon-exciton-photon quasi-particles in the strong-coupling regime.

    • Alexander Sergeevich Kuznetsov
    • , Klaus Biermann
    •  & Paulo Ventura Santos
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hyperbolic phonon polaritons (HPhPs) in anisotropic van der Waals materials hold promise for nanophotonic applications, but their far-field characterization remains challenging. Here, the authors demonstrate the application of Raman spectroscopy in a backscattering configuration to determine the dispersion of HPhPs in thin GaSe crystals.

    • Alaric Bergeron
    • , Clément Gradziel
    •  & Sébastien Francoeur
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pump-probe spectroscopy is a versatile technique to explore ultrafast dynamics on the femtosecond timescale. Here the authors report a pump-probe experiment and quantum modeling combined study revealing dynamics of collective polaritonic states that are formed between a molecular photoswitch and plasmonic nanoantennas.

    • Joel Kuttruff
    • , Marco Romanelli
    •  & Nicolò Maccaferri
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Photonic crystals (PhCs) are artificial periodic materials that can be used to manipulate the flow of light. Here, the authors report the realization of asymmetric PhCs based on in-plane hyperbolic phonon polaritons in perforated α-MoO3, showing low-symmetry deep-subwavelength Bloch modes that are robust against lattice rearrangement in specific directions.

    • Jiangtao Lv
    • , Yingjie Wu
    •  & Qingdong Ou
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Absorption, transmission and reflection are three processes characterizing optical devices. Absorption allows for signal conversion and transmission is important for signal transfer, however, reflection is frequently detrimental to device performance. Here, Qian et al demonstrate a magnonic device with controllable absorption and transmission while maintain zero reflection.

    • Jie Qian
    • , C. H. Meng
    •  & C. -M. Hu
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Experiments suggest that placing molecules in an infrared cavity alters their reactivity, an effect lacking a clear theoretical explanation. Here, the authors show that the key to understanding this process may lie in quantum light-matter interactions.

    • Lachlan P. Lindoy
    • , Arkajit Mandal
    •  & David R. Reichman
  • Article
    | Open Access

    In-plane hyperbolic phonon polaritons in α-MoO3 crystals hold promise for terahertz (THz) and longwave infrared (LWIR) photonic applications, but their coupling with far-field excitations remains challenging. Here, the authors report the fabrication of α-MoO3 ribbon arrays that can be applied as tunable THz and LWIR filters and polarizers.

    • Wuchao Huang
    • , Thomas G. Folland
    •  & Shaozhi Deng
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Exciton-polaritons present opportunities for quantum photonics, next generation qubits, and tuning material photophysics. Here Laitz et al. study the temperature dependence of 2D perovskite microcavity polaritons, revealing material-specific relaxation mechanisms towards the control of polariton momentum.

    • Madeleine Laitz
    • , Alexander E. K. Kaplan
    •  & Vladimir Bulović
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The optical quality of large-area transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) monolayers is usually limited by surface defects and inhomogeneities. Here, the authors report a method based on 1-dodecanol encapsulation to improve the optical properties of TMD monolayers over mm-scale, enabling the fabrication of an array of polariton photonic crystal cavities.

    • Qiuyang Li
    • , Adam Alfrey
    •  & Hui Deng
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors embed a multiple quantum-well WS2 heterostructure in a planar microcavity and show the systematic control of the normal mode coupling-strength. They find a strong enhancement of the characteristic time scale, which they attribute to long-lived dark excitations emerging in the structure.

    • Jiaxin Zhao
    • , Antonio Fieramosca
    •  & Qihua Xiong
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors investigate whether strong light-matter coupling can alter the nonlinear optical response of molecules inside a microcavity. Focusing on electroabsorption as a model third order nonlinearity, they find that apparent discrepancies between experiment and classical transfer matrix modeling arise from dark states in the system and are not a sign of new physics in the strong coupling regime.

    • Chiao-Yu Cheng
    • , Nina Krainova
    •  & Noel C. Giebink
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors predict that plasmons in two-dimensional materials with closely located electron and hole Fermi pockets can be amplified when an electrical current bias is applied along the displaced electron-hole pockets, without the need for an external gain medium.

    • Sang Hyun Park
    • , Michael Sammon
    •  & Tony Low
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lead halide perovskites have recently emerged as a promising platform for the study of polariton superfluidity at room temperature. Here the authors report a complete set of quantum fluid phase transitions in both 1D and 2D homogeneous single crystals of CsPbBr3.

    • Kai Peng
    • , Renjie Tao
    •  & Wei Bao
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors demonstrate on-the-fly reconfigurable optical trapping of organic polariton condensates which are delocalised over a macroscopic distance from the excitation region, holding great potential for future work on polaritonic lattice physics.

    • Mengjie Wei
    • , Wouter Verstraelen
    •  & Hamid Ohadi
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dipolar excitons enable large nonlinear interaction but are usually hampered by their weak oscillator strength. Here, the authors demonstrate the strong light-matter coupling of interlayer dipolar excitons having unusually large oscillator strength in bilayer MoS2 resulting in highly nonlinear dipolar polaritons.

    • Biswajit Datta
    • , Mandeep Khatoniar
    •  & Vinod M. Menon
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Observation of a Bloch-Siegert shift has remained elusive. Here, Wu et al, reports spin-selective Bloch-Siegert shift in lead halide perovskite quantum dots, and highlights the importance of many-body interactions in correctly modeling the shift.

    • Yuxuan Li
    • , Yaoyao Han
    •  & Jingyi Zhu
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hybrid light-matter states formed in the strong light-matter coupling regime can alter the molecular ground-state reactivity. Here, Li et al. computationally demonstrate that pumping a collection of solvent molecules forming hybrid vibrational light-matter states in an optical cavity can excite solute molecules to very high excited states.

    • Tao E. Li
    • , Abraham Nitzan
    •  & Joseph E. Subotnik
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Engineered spin-orbit coupling can induce novel quantum phases in a Bose-Einstein condensate, however such demonstrations have been limited to cold atom systems. Here the authors realize a exciton-polarion condensate with tunable spin-orbit coupling in a liquid crystal microcavity at room temperature.

    • Yao Li
    • , Xuekai Ma
    •  & Tingge Gao
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hyperbolic phonon polaritons – mixed states of photons and anisotropic lattice vibrations – offer appealing properties for nanophotonic applications. Here, the authors show that the plasmon-phonon hybridization upon electronic doping in graphene/α-MoO3 heterostructures can induce topological transitions of the polariton wavefront.

    • Francesco L. Ruta
    • , Brian S. Y. Kim
    •  & D. N. Basov
  • Article
    | Open Access

    By combining an asymmetric immersion lens setup and a complementary resonating metasurface, the authors are able to resolve the far-field transmission of an ultrastrongly coupled, highly subwavelength split-ring single resonator at millimeter wavelengths.

    • Shima Rajabali
    • , Sergej Markmann
    •  & Giacomo Scalari
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phase singularities are known to have applications in various branches of optics. Here the authors demonstrate that phase singularities can be created and controlled, all optically, in a simple thin film of organic molecules using cavity-free strong light-matter coupling.

    • Philip A. Thomas
    • , Kishan S. Menghrajani
    •  & William L. Barnes
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The real-space imaging of propagating THz polaritons, coupled light-matter excitations, in topological insulators has been elusive so far. Here, the authors report spectroscopic THz near-field images of the topological insulator Bi2Se3 revealing polaritons formed by coupling of THz radiation to optical phonons and various charge carriers.

    • Shu Chen
    • , Andrei Bylinkin
    •  & Rainer Hillenbrand
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Acoustic graphene plasmons (AGPs) hold promise for nanophotonics and sensing applications. Here, the authors observe enhanced in-plane scattering of mid-infrared AGPs caused by atomic steps on the substrate surface, suggesting potential strategies for controlling their propagation via substrate engineering.

    • Ni Zhang
    • , Weiwei Luo
    •  & Jingjun Xu
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Strong coupling between light and matter can be engineered to influence their properties and behaviour. Here, the authors demonstrate the evolution from weak to ultrastrong coupling of microcavity modes and optical phonons with hexagonal boron nitride layers in a Fabry-Perot resonator.

    • María Barra-Burillo
    • , Unai Muniain
    •  & Rainer Hillenbrand
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Naturally occurring hyperbolic polaritons exist in a class of layered materials. Here, the authors show evidence, via optical spectroscopy, of hyperbolic exciton-polaritons in phosphorene, originating from its in-plane anisotropy and strong exciton resonances.

    • Fanjie Wang
    • , Chong Wang
    •  & Hugen Yan
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Semiconductor microcavities allow engineering of artificial lattices with optical write-in and read-out of information. Here, the authors show an optically imprinted system of exciton-polaritons arranged in a Lieb lattice and reveal a nonequilibrium transition from scattered- to trapped polariton condensates.

    • S. Alyatkin
    • , H. Sigurdsson
    •  & P. G. Lagoudakis
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Room-temperature exciton polaritons in a monolayer WS2 are shown to display strong motional narrowing of the linewidth and enhanced first-order coherence. They can propagate for tens of micrometers while maintaining partial coherence, and display signatures of ballistic (dissipationless) transport.

    • M. Wurdack
    • , E. Estrecho
    •  & E. A. Ostrovskaya
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Graphene is the archetype for realizing two-dimensional topological phases of matter. Here, the authors introduce a new topological classification connected to polarization transport, where the topological number is revealed in the spatiotemporal dispersion of the susceptibility tensor.

    • Todd Van Mechelen
    • , Wenbo Sun
    •  & Zubin Jacob
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Refraction between anisotropic media is still an unexplored phenomenon. Here, the authors investigate the propagation of hyperbolic phonon polaritons traversing α-MoO3 nanoprisms, showing a bending-free refraction effect and sub-diffractional focusing with foci size as small as 1/50 of the light wavelength in free space.

    • J. Duan
    • , G. Álvarez-Pérez
    •  & P. Alonso-González
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The established means of bandgap control in semiconductors are based on chemical, electrical or optical doping. Here, the authors report wide bandgap modulations in monolayer WS2 at room temperature by coupling the 2D semiconductor to a self-assembled plasmonic crystal inducing coherent hot electron doping.

    • Yu-Hui Chen
    • , Ronnie R. Tamming
    •  & Min Qiu