Ultrafast imaging of polariton propagation and interactions. uri icon

abstract

  • Semiconductor excitations can hybridize with cavity photons to form exciton-polaritons (EPs) with remarkable properties, including light-like energy flow combined with matter-like interactions. To fully harness these properties, EPs must retain ballistic, coherent transport despite matter-mediated interactions with lattice phonons. Here we develop a nonlinear momentum-resolved optical approach that directly images EPs in real space on femtosecond scales in a range of polaritonic architectures. We focus our analysis on EP propagation in layered halide perovskite microcavities. We reveal that EP-phonon interactions lead to a large renormalization of EP velocities at high excitonic fractions at room temperature. Despite these strong EP-phonon interactions, ballistic transport is maintained for up to half-exciton EPs, in agreement with quantum simulations of dynamic disorder shielding through light-matter hybridization. Above 50% excitonic character, rapid decoherence leads to diffusive transport. Our work provides a general framework to precisely balance EP coherence, velocity, and nonlinear interactions.

published proceedings

  • Nat Commun

author list (cited authors)

  • Xu, D., Mandal, A., Baxter, J. M., Cheng, S., Lee, I., Su, H., ... Delor, M.

complete list of authors

  • Xu, Ding||Mandal, Arkajit||Baxter, James M||Cheng, Shan-Wen||Lee, Inki||Su, Haowen||Liu, Song||Reichman, David R||Delor, Milan