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Whispering gallery modes in a microwire are characterized by a nearly equidistant energy spectrum. In the strong exciton-photon coupling regime, this system represents a bosonic cascade: a ladder of discrete energy levels that sustains stimulated transitions between neighboring steps. In this work, by using femtosecond angle-resolved spectroscopic imaging technique, the ultrafast dynamics of polaritons in a bosonic cascade based on a one-dimensional ZnO whispering gallery microcavity is explicitly visualized. Clear ladder-form build-up process from higher to lower energy branches of the polariton condensates are observed, which are well reproduced by modeling using rate equations. Moreover, the polariton parametric scattering dynamics are distinguished on a timescale of hundreds of femtoseconds. Our understanding of the femtosecond condensation and scattering dynamics paves the way towards ultrafast coherent control of polaritons at room temperature, which will make it promising for high-speed all-optical integrated applications.

Layered antiferromagnetism is the spatial arrangement of ferromagnetic layers with antiferromagnetic interlayer coupling. Recently, the van der Waals magnet, chromium triiodide (CrI3), emerged as the first layered antiferromagnetic insulator in its few-layer form, opening up ample opportunities for novel device functionalities. Here, we discovered an emergent nonreciprocal second order nonlinear optical effect in bilayer CrI3. The observed second harmonic generation (SHG) is giant: several orders of magnitude larger than known magnetization induced SHG and comparable to SHG in the best 2D nonlinear optical materials studied so far (e.g. MoS2). We showed that while the parent lattice of bilayer CrI3 is centrosymmetric and thus does not contribute to the SHG signal, the observed nonreciprocal SHG originates purely from the layered antiferromagnetic order, which breaks both spatial inversion and time reversal symmetries. Furthermore, polarization-resolved measurements revealed the underlying C2h symmetry, and thus monoclinic stacking order in CrI3 bilayers, providing crucial structural information for the microscopic origin of layered antiferromagnetism. Our results highlight SHG as a highly sensitive probe that can reveal subtle magnetic order and open novel nonlinear and nonreciprocal optical device possibilities based on 2D magnets.

Angle-resolved second harmonic generation (SHG) spectra of ZnO microwires show characteristic Fano resonances in the spectral vicinity of exciton-polariton modes. The output SHG spectra after SHG interacting with exciton polariton shows a resonant enhancement peak accompanied by a suppression dip originating from the constructive and destructive interference respectively. It is demonstrated that the Fano line shape, and thus the Fano asymmetry parameter q, can be tuned by the phase-shift of the two channels. The phase-dependent q was calculated and the model describes our experimental results well. In particular, the phase-to-q relation unveil the crucial information about the dynamics of the system, e.g., defining the line shape of output SHG spectra in a superposition of quantum states.

Polariton lasing is the coherent emission arising from a macroscopic polariton condensate first proposed in 1996. Over the past two decades, polariton lasing has been demonstrated in a few inorganic and organic semiconductors in both low and room temperatures. Polariton lasing in inorganic materials significantly relies on sophisticated epitaxial growth of crystalline gain medium layers sandwiched by two distributed Bragg reflectors in which combating the built-in strain and mismatched thermal properties is nontrivial. On the other hand, organic active media usually suffer from large threshold density and weak nonlinearity due to the Frenkel exciton nature. Further development of polariton lasing towards technologically significant applications demand more accessible materials, ease of device fabrication and broadly tunable emission at room temperature. Herein, we report the experimental realization of room-temperature polariton lasing based on an epitaxy-free all-inorganic cesium lead chloride perovskite microcavity. Polariton lasing is unambiguously evidenced by a superlinear power dependence, macroscopic ground state occupation, blueshift of ground state emission, narrowing of the linewidth and the build-up of long-range spatial coherence. Our work suggests considerable promise of lead halide perovskites towards large-area, low-cost, high performance room temperature polariton devices and coherent light sources extending from the ultraviolet to near infrared range.

Two dimensional (2D) semiconductor materials of transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) manifest many peculiar physical phenomena in the light-matter interaction. Due to their ultrathin property, strong interaction with light and the robust excitons at room temperature, they provide a perfect platform for studying the physics of strong coupling in low dimension and at room temperature. Here we report the strong coupling between 2D semiconductor excitons and Tamm plasmon polaritons (TPPs). We observe a Rabi splitting of about 54 meV at room temperature by measuring the angle resolved differential reflectivity spectra and simulate the theoretical results by using the transfer matrix method. Our results will promote the realization of the TPP based ultrathin polariton devices at room temperature., Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures

The optical nonlinearity of WS2, MoS2 monolayer and few-layer films was investigated using the Z-scan technique with femtosecond pulses from the visible to the near infrared. The dependence of nonlinear absorption of the WS2 and MoS2 films on layer number and excitation wavelength was studied systematically. WS2 with 1~3 layers exhibits a giant two-photon absorption (TPA) coefficient. Saturation of TPA for WS2 with 1~3 layers and MoS2 with 25~27 layers was observed. The giant nonlinearity of WS2 and MoS2 is attributed to two dimensional confinement, a giant exciton effect and the band edge resonance of TPA.

We demonstrate the selective coupling of a single quantum dot exciton spin state with the cavity mode in a quantum dot-micropillar cavity system. By tuning an external magnetic field, the Zeeman splitted exciton spin states coupled differently with the cavity due to field manipulated energy detuning. We found a 26 times increase in the emission intensity of spin-up exciton state with respect to spin-down exciton state at resonance due to Purcell effect, which gives rise to the selective enhancement of light emission with the circular polarization degree up to 93%. A four-level rate equation model is developed and quantitatively agrees well with our experimental data. Our results pave the way for the realization of future quantum light sources and the quantum information processing applications., Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures

A cavity-polariton, formed due to the strong coupling between exciton and cavity mode, is one of the most promising composite bosons for realizing macroscopic spontaneous coherence at high temperature. Up to date, most of polariton quantum degeneracy experiments were conducted in the complicated two-dimensional (2D) planar microcavities. The role of dimensionality in coherent quantum degeneracy of a composite bosonic system of exciton polaritons remains mysterious. Here we report the first experimental observation of a one-dimensional (1D) polariton condensate in a ZnO microwire at room temperature. The massive occupation of the polariton ground state above a distinct pump power threshold is clearly demonstrated by using the angular resolved spectroscopy under non-resonant excitation. The power threshold is one order of magnitude lower than that of Mott transition. Furthermore, a well-defined far field emission pattern from the polariton condensate mode is observed, manifesting the coherence build-up in the condensed polariton system., Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures

We report magnetic field control of the quantum chaotic dynamics of hydrogen analogues in an anisotropic solid state environment. The chaoticity of the system dynamics was quantified by means of energy level statistics. We analyzed the magnetic field dependence of the statistical distribution of the impurity energy levels and found a smooth transition between the Poisson limit and the Wigner limit, i.e. transition between regular Poisson and fully chaotic Wigner dynamics. Effect of the crystal field anisotropy on the quantum chaotic dynamics, which manifests itself in characteristic transitions between regularity and chaos for different field orientations, was demonstrated., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures

Phonon damping is the main source of pure dephasing in the solid state, limiting many fundamental quantum effects to low temperature observations. Here we show how excitons in semiconductors can be totally decoupled from the phonon bath, even at room temperature, thanks to their strong interaction with photons. To do so, we investigated ZnO microwires, a new semiconductor nanostructure made of large band-gap material where the light can be trapped and guided into whispering gallery modes. In this system, the very large coupling regime between exciton and photon results in unusual exciton-polariton of one-dimensional character and Rabi splitting as large as 300meV. We find that polariton modes of excitonic fraction up to 75% exhibit no thermal broadening up to room temperature. We show that this remarkable behavior is due to the very large Rabi splitting as compared to the LO phonon energy., Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures

We report direct observation of the strong exciton-photon coupling in ZnO tapered whispering gallery (WG) microcavity at room temperature. By scanning excitations along the tapered arm of ZnO tetrapod using micro-photoluminescence spectrometer with different polarizations, we observed a transition from the pure WG optical modes in the weak interaction regime to the excitonic polariton in the strong coupling regime. The experimental observations are well described by using the plane wave model including excitonic polariton dispersion relation. This provides a direct mapping of the polariton dispersion, and thus a comprehensive picture for coupling of different excitons with differently polarized WG modes., Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, 1 table