<span class="mw-page-title-main">PolaFlow</span>
Fabrice P. Laussy's Web

PolaFlow

PolaFlow was a European funded network (ERC-2012-StG_20111012) with 1,482,600€ total funding on the period from 1 November (2012) till 31 October (2017) based in Lecce (Italy) under the supervision of Daniele Sanvitto, with two partners, in Heraklion (Crete) under the supervision of Pavlos Savvidis and in Madrid (Spain) under the supervision of Fabrice Laussy. On January (2017), the Madrid (Laussy) group moved to Wolverhampton. The present page focuses on the Madrid node.

The network studied the physics of microcavity polaritons. Madrid provided essentially a theory support (Blanca was our Fermi of the group, doing everything both experimental and theoretical).

Results

The POLAFLOW consortium, coordinated by Lecce (PI D. Sanvitto), with partners in Madrid, Spain, later in Wolverhampton, UK (group led by F.P. Laussy) and Heraklion, Crete (group led by P. Savvidis) studied the dynamics of polariton quantum fluids and their prospects for applications as all-optical devices, in particular as components for a quantum technology.

Since polaritons can propagate, be routed and interact as well as interfere, it is likely that they can be brought to perform useful tasks. It was the aim of POLAFLOW to investigate the possible applications of these versatile and wondrous objects.

The proposal went beyond expectations, pioneering unforeseen areas of research, with extension to organic and hybrid materials as well as plasmonics. We have realised AND and OR gates, working with polariton flows and demonstrating in this way cascadability and gain, two essential elements needed to implement an all-optical logic based on polariton circuits. We have investigated frequency and time correlation of polariton condensates and demonstrated the coloured Hanbury Brown‒Twiss effect, thereby providing the first measurement of a two-photon correlation spectrum, which extends the $g^{(2)}$ correlation function to energy correlations. In addition to what was described in the original proposal, and thanks to the development of a very fast detection technique, we could study time-resolved Rabi oscillations between the exciton and photon states of a collective polariton population. This has led to the observation of a rich dynamics of the oscillations which not only depends on the polariton lifetime and population occupancy of the two branches, but also–and surprisingly–on the incoherent injection of polaritons into the ground (lower) state of the system. Acting with multiple laser beams, we demonstrated a full control of the light-matter state of the polaritons, showing the possibility of producing coherent beam of light with an arbitrary fast rotation of their polarisation and realising full Poincaré beams in time (passing through all states of polarisations in a single pulse). Exploiting the same technique, we have also observed a unique self-focusing effect when polaritons are suddenly populated by a short-time laser pulse. This effect is theoretically under study and seems to be unique to the polariton particles, while completely absent in other quantum systems or even classical nonlinear media. Also in this direction, we have studied the effect of polariton interactions on quantum vortices injected in a polariton fluid. We have discovered an interesting phenomenology of attraction, scattering and rotation due to several force fields, sometimes unknown from the standard atomic condensates. Furthermore, we have studied the combination of coherent polarisation fields and vorticity and how these evolve in time under the influence of a dense polariton population. We have observed X-waves and room-temperature superfluidity in an organic-based microcavity. Lately, we have demonstrated that a polariton condensate in a very high finesse microcavity undergoes a BKT phase transition, which was until now relegated only to condensates at equilibrium (for which the 2016 Nobel prize was awarded).

The project has also spurred a purely theoretical line to support the experiment but that sometimes went farther than was technologically possible to implement to date. In particular, a concept for a new type of quantum light has been proposed that consists of 100% emission of energy in packets of exactly N photons. Such a device was designed based on a particular case of strong light-matter coupling, between a single emitter (such as an excitonic transition in a quantum dot) and a small volume photonic mode. The theory shows that this makes it possible to obtain bundles of photons of any desired number by driving the system at adequate resonant frequencies. Further down this research line, the full photon-correlations from resonance fluorescence has been mapped in N-dimensional frequency hyperspace and a concept for a universal quantum emitter, able to generate any combination of pre-determined photon output, has been hinted at and is currently under active investigation. Using particular cases of this general idea, a concept of “Mollow spectroscopy” has been put forward that consists at studying the statistics of transmitted light from a quantum source that excites a target with a tunable range of photon statistics. Some particular cases of this general idea of a new kind of quantum spectroscopy have been successfully implemented in the laboratory with conventional two-photon sources generated by a nonlinear crystal. In this configuration, we have been able to positively answer two fundamental questions raised by POLAFLOW at the start of the project: are polaritons good carriers of quantum information and are interactions sufficiently strong to affect the quantum state of a single polariton? Such questions that have been both answered positively suggest that polaritons can be extremely useful for many applications in quantum optics, communication, metrology and even for photo lithography and medical applications.

Madrid Node

Members

Name Email Phone Office Since Till Position
Fabrice Laussy fabrice.laussy@gmail.com 2665 505 September 2012 August 2017 Head of group, PI
Elena del Valle elena.delvalle.reboul@gmail.com 3767 510 February 2014 2020 Ramon y Cajal
Carlos Sánchez Muñoz carlossmwolff@gmail.com 8516 505 December 2012 December 2016 Ph. D.
Blanca Silva Fernández blanca.silva.fdez@gmail.com 2790 513 June 2013 December 2016 Ph. D.
Juan Camilo López Carreño juclopezca@gmail.com 3002 505 July 2015 2018 Ph. D.
Eduardo Zubizarreta Casalengua eduardo.zubizarreta @estudiante.uam.es 3003 513 January 2016 December 2016 Undergraduate (Master)

Phone numbers are given by their UAM extension. From outside, prepend with: 

+34 91497 ____

Former Members

"Starred people" are those who are still (or came back) with us but with a new (and higher) qualification.

Name Email Since Till Position Now
Dmitrii Vishnevsky dmitrii.vishnevsky @gmail.com August 2013 August 2014 Post. Doc. Left academia (for industry)
David Colas davidcolas63000@gmail.com September 2013 August 2016 Ph. D. Post. Doc. in the group of Davis Matthew (Australia).
Joaquin Ruiz Rivas joaquinruizrivas @gmail.com November 2015 December 2015 Visiting Post. Doc. Left academia (for industry)
Juan Pablo Restrepo Cuartas gomejp@gmail.com Febrero 2014 December 2015 Ph. D. Left academia.
Amir Rahmani a.rahmani.mir @gmail.com March 2015 September 2015 Visiting Ph. D Back to Iran, coworker at a distance
Isabel Andrade andradeisabelcristina @gmail.com October 2015 February 2016 Visiting Ph. D. Back to Colombia, coworker at a distance
William Júnio Lima williamjunio.lima@gmail.com November 2013 September 2014 Visiting Ph. D Back to Brasil
Guillermo Guirales guirales@gmail.com February 2014 July 2014 Visiting Ph. D Back to Colombia
* Juan Camilo López Carreño juclopezca@gmail.com August 2014 July 2015 Master Ph. D.
Santiago Álvarez Tolcheff sa.tolcheff@gmail.com February 2015 June 2015 Undergraduate (TFG) Informal collaborator
* Eduardo Zubizarreta Casalengua eduardo.zubizarreta @estudiante.uam.es September 2015 December 2015 Undergraduate (TFG) Undergraduate (Master)
Miriam Garcia Santa-Maria miriam.garcias01 @estudiante.uam.es September 2015 December 2015 Undergraduate (TFG) Undergraduate
Marcos Rodriguez Muñoz marcos.rodriguezm @estudiante.uam.es September 2015 December 2015 Undergraduate (TFG) Undergraduate

Gallery

  • Group picture in late September 2013, Salento, featuring Fabrice, Carlos, Blanca, Elena, David and Dmitrii.
    Group picture in late September 2013, Salento, featuring Fabrice, Carlos, Blanca, Elena, David and Dmitrii.
  • Visit of the boss, checking on the Madrid node (30 July (2015)).
    Visit of the boss, checking on the Madrid node (30 July (2015)).

Frequent coworkers/close collaborators/guests

Publications

The consortium gave rise to 74 publications in high-impact journals. The main publications from the Madrid/Wolverhampton nodes are (or see the full list from the full consortium):

  1. Effective attractive polariton-polariton interaction mediated by an exciton reservoir. D. V. Vishnevsky and F. Laussy in Phys. Rev. B 90:035413 (2014).
  2. Relaxation Oscillations in the Formation of a Polariton Condensate. M. de Giorgi, D. Ballarini, P. Cazzato, G. Deligeorgis, S. I. Tsintzos, Z. Hatzopoulos, P. G. Savvidis, G. Gigli, F. P. Laussy and D. Sanvitto in Phys. Rev. Lett. 112:113602 (2014).
  3. Emitters of $N$-photon bundles. C. Sánchez Muñoz, E. del Valle, A. González Tudela, K. Müller, S. Lichtmannecker, M. Kaniber, C. Tejedor, J.J. Finley and F.P. Laussy in Nature Photon. 8:550 (2014). 
  4. Focus on cavity and circuit quantum electrodynamics in solids. Y. Arakawa, J. Finley, R. Gross, F. Laussy, E. Solano and J. Vučković in New J. Phys. 17:010201 (2015).
  5. Polarization shaping of Poincaré beams by polariton oscillations. D. Colas, L. Dominici, S. Donati, A. A Pervishko, T.C.H. Liew, I. A. Shelykh, D. Ballarini, M. de Giorgi, A. Bramati, G. Gigli, E. del Valle, F. P Laussy, A. V. Kavokin and D. Sanvitto in Light: Sci. \& App. 4:e350 (2015).
  6. Coherent generation of nonclassical light on chip via detuned photon blockade. K. Müller, A. Rundquist, K. A. Fischer, T. Sarmiento, K. G. Lagoudakis, Y. A. Kelaita, C. Sánchez Muñoz, E. del Valle, F. P. Laussy and J. Vučković in Phys. Rev. Lett. 114:233601 (2015).
  7. Enhanced two-photon emission from a dressed biexciton. C. Sánchez Muñoz, F. P. Laussy, C. Tejedor and E del Valle in New J. Phys. 17:123021 (2015).
  8. Real-space collapse of a polariton condensate. L. Dominici, M. Petrov, M. Matuszewski, D. Ballarini, M. De Giorgi, D. Colas, E. Cancellieri, B. Silva Fernández, A. Bramati, G. Gigli, A. Kavokin, F. Laussy and D. Sanvitto in Nature Comm. 6:8993 (2015).
  9. Optimization of photon correlations by frequency filtering. A. González-Tudela, E. del Valle and F. P. Laussy in Phys. Rev. A 91:043807 (2015).
  10. Exciting Polaritons with Quantum Light. J. C. López Carreño, C. Sánchez Muñoz, D. Sanvitto, E. del Valle and F.P. Laussy in Phys. Rev. Lett. 115:196402 (2015).
  11. Excitation with quantum light. I. Exciting a harmonic oscillator. J. C. López Carreño and F.P. Laussy in Phys. Rev. A 94:063825 (2016). 
  12. Excitation with quantum light. II. Exciting a two-level system. J. C. López Carreño, C. Sánchez Muñoz, E. del Valle and F.P. Laussy in Phys. Rev. A 94:063826 (2016).
  13. Polaritonic Rabi and Josephson oscillations. A. Rahmani and F.P. Laussy in Sci. Rep. 6:28930 (2016). 
  14. Self-Interfering Wave Packets. D. Colas and F.P. Laussy in Phys. Rev. Lett. 116:026401 (2016). 
  15. The colored Hanbury Brown-Twiss effect. B. Silva, C. Sánchez Muñoz, D. Ballarini, A. González-Tudela, M. de Giorgi, G. Gigli, K. West, L. Pfeiffer, E. del Valle, D. Sanvitto and F. P. Laussy in Sci. Rep. 6:37980 (2016).
  16. Quantum statistics of bosonic cascades. T. C. H. Liew, Y. G. Rubo, A. S. Sheremet, S. De Liberato, I. A. Shelykh, F. P. Laussy and A. V. Kavokin in New J. Phys. 18:023041 (2016).
  17. Structure of the harmonic oscillator in the space of $n$-particle Glauber correlators. E. Zubizarreta Casalengua, J. C. López Carreño, E. del Valle and F. P. Laussy in J. Math. Phys. 58:062109 (2017).
  18. Photon Correlations from the Mollow Triplet. J. C. López Carreño, E. del Valle and F. P. Laussy in Laser Photon. Rev. 11:1700090 (2017).
  19. Kinetic Monte Carlo approach to nonequilibrium bosonic systems. T. C. H. Liew, H. Flayac, D. Poletti, I. G. Savenko and F. P. Laussy in Phys. Rev. B 96:125423 (2017).
  20. Macroscopic Two-Dimensional Polariton Condensates. D. Ballarini, D. Caputo, C. Sánchez Muñoz, M. De Giorgi, L. Dominici, M. H. Szymańska, K. West, L. N. Pfeiffer, G. Gigli, F. P. Laussy and D. Sanvitto in Phys. Rev. Lett. 118:215301 (2017).
  21. First observation of the quantized exciton-polariton field and effect of interactions on a single polariton. A. Cuevas, J. C. López Carreño, B. Silva, M. De Giorgi, D. G. Suárez-Forero, C. Sánchez Muñoz, A. Fieramosca, F. Cardano, L. Marrucci, V. Tasco, G. Biasiol, E. del Valle, L. Dominici, D. Ballarini, G. Gigli, P. Mataloni, F. P. Laussy, F. Sciarrino and D. Sanvitto in Science Advances 4:eaao6814 (2018).
  22. Filtering Multiphoton Emission from State-of-the-Art Cavity QED. C. Sánchez Muñoz, F. P. Laussy, E. del Valle, C. Tejedor and A. González-Tudela in Optica 5:14 (2018).
  23. Frequency-resolved Monte Carlo. J. C. López Carreño, E. del Valle and F. P. Laussy in Sci. Rep. 8:6975 (2018).
  24. Topological order and thermal equilibrium in polariton condensates. D. Caputo, D. Ballarini, G. Dagvadorj, C. Sánchez Muñoz, M. De Giorgi, L. Dominici, K. West, L. N. Pfeiffer, G. Gigli, F. P. Laussy, M. H. Szymańska and D. Sanvitto in Nature Mater. 17: (2018).

Meetings

Social activities

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