Neutral particles subject to artificial gauge potentials can behave as charged particles in magnetic fields. This fascinating premise has led to demonstrations of one-way waveguides, topologically protected edge states and Landau levels for photons. In ultracold neutral atoms, effective gauge fields have allowed the emulation of matter under strong magnetic fields leading to realization of Harp...

We report on the room temperature polariton lasing and photon lasing in a ZnO-based hybrid microcavity under optical pumping. A series of experimental studies of the polariton lasing (exciton-photon detunings of δ = -119 meV) in the strong-coupling regime are discussed and compared to a photon lasing (δ = -45 meV) in the weak-coupling regime obtained in the same structure. The measured threshol...

Exciton-polaritons form upon strong coupling between electronic excitations of a material and photonic states of a surrounding microcavity. In organic semiconductors the special nature of excited states leads to particularly strong coupling and facilitates condensation of exciton-polaritons at room temperature, which may lead to electrically pumped organic polariton lasers. However, charge carr...

Nearly one decade after the first observation of Bose-Einstein condensation in atom vapors and realization of matter-wave (atom) lasers, similar concepts have been demonstrated recently for polaritons: half-matter, half-light quasiparticles in semiconductor microcavities. The half-light nature of polaritons makes polariton lasers promising as a new source of coherent and nonclassical light with...

Time evolution of a nonequilibrium polariton condensate has been studied in the framework of a microscopic approach. It has been shown that due to polariton-polariton scattering a significant condensate depletion takes place in a comparatively short time interval. The condensate decay occurs in the form of multiple echo signals. Distribution-function dynamics of noncondensate polaritons have be...

The Green’s-theorem integral equation formulation is employed to study numerically the coupling into surface plasmon polaritons by illuminating a finite metal grating with a Gaussian beam from the vacuum half-space above the metal surface. A flat surface impedance boundary condition is used to simplify the scattering integral equations. The grating coupler period is chosen so that the first dif...

We consider a zigzag chain of coupled micropillar cavities, taking into account the polarization of polariton states. We show that the TE-TM splitting of photonic cavity modes yields topologically protected polariton edge states. During the strongly nonadiabatic process of polariton condensation, the Kibble-Zurek mechanism leads to a random choice of polarization, equivalent to the dimerization...

Using two-dimensional spectroscopy, we resolve multi-polariton coherences in quantum wells embedded inside a semiconductor microcavity and elucidate how multi-exciton correlations mediate polariton nonlinear dynamics. We find that polariton correlation strengths depend on spectral overlap with the biexciton resonance and that up to at least four polaritons can be correlated, a higher-order corr...

The collective wave type plasmon polariton self-modes in the metallic (Au, Ag) nano-chain were determined and analyzed with respect to the nano-sphere size and chain separation parameters. At some regions for parameters, the undamped modes were identified when the interaction had been assumed as the near-field-zone dipole coupling. These modes were found on the rim of stability of the linear th...

We report on the condensation of microcavity exciton polaritons under optical excitation in a microcavity with four embedded InGaAs quantum wells. The polariton laser is characterized by a distinct non-linearity in the input-output-characteristics, which is accompanied by a drop of the emission linewidth indicating temporal coherence and a characteristic persisting emission blueshift with incre...