Skyrmion formation and optical spin-Hall effect in an expanding coherent cloud of indirect excitons

Coherent optical spin Hall transport for polaritonics at room temperature

Spin or valley degrees of freedom hold promise for next-generation spintronics. Nonetheless, the macroscopic coherent spin current formations are still hindered by rapid dephasing due to electron scattering, specifically at room temperature. Exciton polaritons offer excellent platforms for spin-optronic devices via the optical spin Hall effect. However, this effect could neither be unequivocally observed at room temperature nor be exploited for practical spintronic devices due to the presence of strong thermal fluctuations or large linear spin splitting. Here we report the observation of room-temperature optical spin Hall effect of exciton polaritons, with the spin current flow over 60 μm in a formamidinium lead bromide perovskite microcavity. We provide direct evidence of long-range coherence in the flow of polaritons and the spin current carried by them. Leveraging the spin Hall transport of polaritons, we further demonstrate two polaritonic devices, namely, a NOT gate and a spin-polarized beamsplitter, advancing the frontier of room-temperature polaritonics in perovskite microcavities.

Moiré pattern of interference dislocations in condensate of indirect excitons

Interference patterns provide direct measurement of coherent propagation of matter waves in quantum systems. Superfluidity in Bose-Einstein condensates of excitons can enable long-range ballistic exciton propagation and can lead to emerging long-scale interference patterns. Indirect excitons (IXs) are formed by electrons and holes in separated layers. The theory predicts that the reduced IX recombination enables IX superfluid propagation over macroscopic distances. Here, we present dislocation-like phase singularities in interference patterns produced by condensate of IXs. We analyze how exciton vortices and skyrmions should appear in the interference experiments and show that the observed interference dislocations are not associated with these phase defects. We show that the observed interference dislocations originate from the moiré effect in combined interference patterns of propagating condensate matter waves. The interference dislocations are formed by the IX matter waves ballistically propagating over macroscopic distances. The long-range ballistic IX propagation is the evidence for IX condensate superfluidity.

Pancharatnam-Berry phase in condensate of indirect excitons

The Pancharatnam-Berry phase is a geometric phase acquired over a cycle of parameters in the Hamiltonian governing the evolution of the system. Here, we report on the observation of the Pancharatnam-Berry phase in a condensate of indirect excitons (IXs) in a GaAs-coupled quantum well structure. The Pancharatnam-Berry phase is directly measured by detecting phase shifts of interference fringes in IX interference patterns. Correlations are found between the phase shifts, polarization pattern of IX emission, and onset of IX spontaneous coherence. The evolving Pancharatnam-Berry phase is acquired due to coherent spin precession in IX condensate and is observed with no decay over lengths exceeding 10 μm indicating long-range coherent spin transport.

Chaotization of internal motion of excitons in ultrathin layers by spin-orbit coupling

We show that Rashba spin-orbit coupling (SOC) can generate chaotic behavior of excitons in two-dimensional semiconductor structures. To model this chaos, we study a Kepler system with spin-orbit coupling and numerically obtain a transition to chaos at a sufficiently strong coupling. The chaos emerges since the SOC reduces the number of integrals of motion as compared to the number of degrees of freedom. Dynamically, the dependence of the exciton energy on the spin orientation in the presence of SOC produces an anomalous spin-dependent velocity resulting in chaotic motion. We observe numerically the critical dependence of the dynamics on the initial conditions, where the system can return to and exit a stability domain through very small changes in the initial spin orientation. This chaos can have a strong influence on the lifetime of optically injected carriers in semiconductors and organometallic perovskites. Hence, this effect should be taken into account while designing structures for photovoltaic and optical spintronics applications, where excitons play a significant role.

Bose-Einstein condensation and indirect excitons: a review

We review recent progress on Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of semiconductor excitons. The first part deals with theory, the second part with experiments. This Review is written at a time where the problem of exciton Bose-Einstein condensation has just been revived by the understanding that the exciton condensate must be dark because the exciton ground state is not coupled to light. Here, we theoretically discuss this missed understanding before providing its experimental support through experiments that scrutinize indirect excitons made of spatially separated electrons and holes. The theoretical part first discusses condensation of elementary bosons. In particular, the necessary inhibition of condensate fragmentation by exchange interaction is stressed, before extending the discussion to interacting bosons with spin degrees of freedom. The theoretical part then considers composite bosons made of two fermions like semiconductor excitons. The spin structure of the excitons is detailed, with emphasis on the crucial fact that ground-state excitons are dark: indeed, this imposes the exciton Bose-Einstein condensate to be not coupled to light in the dilute regime. Condensate fragmentations are then reconsidered. In particular, it is shown that while at low density, the exciton condensate is fully dark, it acquires a bright component, coherent with the dark one, beyond a density threshold: in this regime, the exciton condensate is 'gray'. The experimental part first discusses optical creation of indirect excitons in quantum wells, and the detection of their photoluminescence. Exciton thermalisation is also addressed, as well as available approaches to estimate the exciton density. We then switch to specific experiments where indirect excitons form a macroscopic fragmented ring. We show that such ring provides efficient electrostatic trapping in the region of the fragments where an essentially-dark exciton Bose-Einstein condensate is formed at sub-Kelvin bath temperatures. The macroscopic spatial coherence of the photoluminescence observed in this essentially dark region confirms this conclusion.

Self-Interfering Wave Packets

We study the propagation of noninteracting polariton wave packets. We show how two qualitatively different concepts of mass that arise from the peculiar polariton dispersion lead to a new type of particlelike object from noninteracting fields-much like self-accelerating beams-shaped by the Rabi coupling out of Gaussian initial states. A divergence and change of sign of the diffusive mass results in a "mass wall" on which polariton wave packets bounce back. Together with the Rabi dynamics, this yields propagation of ultrafast subpackets and ordering of a spacetime crystal.

Effects of fermion exchange on the polarization of exciton condensates

Exchange interaction is responsible for the stability of elementary boson condensates with respect to momentum fragmentation. This remains true for composite bosons when single fermion exchanges are included but spin degrees of freedom are ignored. Here, we show that their inclusion can produce a spin fragmentation of the dark exciton condensate, i.e., an unpolarized condensate with an equal amount of spin (+2) and (-2) excitons not coupled to light. The composite boson many-body formalism allows us to predict that, for spatially indirect excitons, the condensate polarization switches from unpolarized to fully polarized when the distance between the layers confining electrons and holes increases. Importantly, the threshold distance for this switch lies in a regime fully accessible to experiments.

Spin-orbit coupling and the optical spin Hall effect in photonic graphene

We study the spin-orbit coupling induced by the splitting between TE and TM optical modes in a photonic honeycomb lattice. Using a tight-binding approach, we calculate analytically the band structure. Close to the Dirac point, we derive an effective Hamiltonian. We find that the local reduced symmetry (D_{3h}) transforms the TE-TM effective magnetic field into an emergent field with a Dresselhaus symmetry. As a result, particles become massive, but no gap opens. The emergent field symmetry is revealed by the optical spin Hall effect.