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A. Bramati

Publications and source records attributed to A. Bramati.

33 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv2013

Motion of spin polariton bullets in semiconductor microcavities

The dynamics of optical switching in semiconductor microcavities in the strong coupling regime is studied using time- and spatially-resolved spectroscopy. The switching is triggered by polarised short pulses which create spin bullets of high polariton density. The spin packets travel with speeds of the order of 106 m/s due to the ballistic propagation and drift of exciton-polaritons from high to low density areas. The speed is controlled by the angle of incidence of the excitation beams, which changes the polariton group velocity.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2013

Control and ultrafast dynamics of a two-fluid polariton switch

We investigate the cross-interactions in a two-component polariton quantum fluid coherently driven by two independent pumping lasers tuned at different energies and momenta. We show that both the hysteresis cycles and the ON/OFF threshold of one polariton signal can be entirely controlled by a second polariton fluid. Furthermore, we study the ultrafast switching dynamics of a driven polariton state, demonstrating the ability to control the polariton population with an external laser pulse, in less than a few picoseconds.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2012

Half-solitons in a polariton quantum fluid behave like magnetic monopoles

Monopoles are magnetic charges, point-like sources of magnetic field. Contrary to electric charges they are absent in Maxwell's equations and have never been observed as fundamental particles. Quantum fluids such as spinor Bose-Einstein condensates have been predicted to show monopoles in the form of excitations combining phase and spin topologies. Thanks to its unique spin structure and the direct optical control of the fluid wavefunction, an ideal system to experimentally explore this phenomenon is a condensate of exciton-polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity. We use this system to create half-solitons, non-linear excitations with mixed spin-phase geometry. By tracking their trajectory, we demonstrate that half-solitons behave as monopoles, magnetic charges accelerated along an effective magnetic field present in the microcavity. The field-induced spatial separation of half-solitons of opposite charges opens the way to the generation of magnetic currents in a quantum fluid.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗
arXiv2011

High speed spatially multimode Lambda-type atomic memory with arbitrary frequency detuning

We present a general model for an atomic memory using ultra-short pulses of light, which allows both spatial and temporal multimode storage. The process involves the storage of a faint quantum light pulse into the spin coherence of the ground state of Lambda-type 3-level atoms, in the presence of a strong driving pulse. Our model gives a full description of the evolution of the field and of the atomic coherence in space and time throughout the writing and the read-out processes. It is valid for any frequency detuning, from the resonant case to the Raman case, and allows a detailed optimization of the memory efficiency.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2011

Electromagnetically induced transparency in inhomogeneously broadened Lambda-transition with multiple excited levels

Electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) has mainly been modelled for three-level systems. In particular, a considerable interest has been dedicated to the Lambda-configuration, with two ground states and one excited state. However, in the alkali-metal atoms, which are commonly used, hyperfine interaction in the excited state introduces several levels which simultaneously participate in the scattering process. When the Doppler broadening is comparable with the hyperfine splitting in the upper state, the three-level Lambda model does not reproduce the experimental results. Here we theoretically investigate the EIT in a hot vapor of alkali-metal atoms and demonstrate that it can be strongly reduced due to the presence of multiple excited levels. Given this model, we also show that a well-designed optical pumping enables to significantly recover the transparency.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2011

All-optical control of the quantum flow of a polariton superfluid

While photons in vacuum are massless particles that do not interact with each other, significant photon-photon interactions appear in suitable nonlinear media, leading to novel hydrodynamic behaviors typical of quantum fluids. Here we show the formation of vortex-antivortex pairs in a Bose-Einstein condensate of exciton-polaritons -a coherent gas of strongly dressed photons- flowing at supersonic speed against an artificial potential barrier created and controlled by a light beam in a planar semiconductor microcavity. The observed hydrodynamical phenomenology is in agreement with original theoretical predictions based on the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, recently generalized to the polariton context. However, in contrast to this theoretical work, we show how the initial position and the subsequent trajectory of the vortices crucially depend on the strength and size of the artificial barrier. Additionally, we demonstrate how a suitably tailored optical beam can be used to permanently trap and store the vortices that are hydrodynamically created in the wake of a natural defect. These observations are borne out by time-dependent theoretical simulations.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2011

High speed spatially multimode atomic memory

We study the coherent storage and retrieval of a very short multimode light pulse in an atomic ensemble. We consider a quantum memory process based on the conversion of a signal pulse into a long-lived spin coherence via light matter interaction in an on-resonant Lambda-type system. In order to study the writing and reading processes we analytically solve the partial differential equations describing the evolution of the field and of the atomic coherence in time as well as in space. We show how to optimize the process for writing as well as for reading. If the medium length is fixed, for each length, there is an optimal value of the pulse duration. We discuss the information capacity of this memory scheme and we estimate the number of transverse modes that can be stored as a quantum hologram.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2010

Spin rings in bi-stable planar semiconductor microcavities

A unique feature of exciton-polaritons, inherited from their mixed light-matter origin, is the strongly spin-dependent polariton-polariton interaction, which has been predicted to result in the formation of spin rings in real space [Shelykh et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 116401 (2008)]. Here we experimentally demonstrate the spin bi-stability of exciton-polaritons in an InGaAs-based semiconductor microcavity under resonant optical pumping. We observe the formation of spin rings whose size can be finely controlled in a spatial scale down to the micrometer range, much smaller than the spot size. We additionally evaluate the sign and magnitude of the antiparallel polariton spin interaction constant.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2009

Anisotropic Optical Spin Hall Effect in Semiconductor Microcavities

Propagating, directionally dependent, polarized spin-currents are created in an anisotropic planar semiconductor microcavity, via Rayleigh scattering of optically injected polaritons in the optical spin Hall regime. The influence of anisotropy results in the suppression or enhancement of the pseudospin precession of polaritons scattered into different directions. This is exploited to create intense spin currents by excitation on top of localized defects. A theoretical model considering the influence of the total effective magnetic field on the polariton pseudospin quantitatively reproduces the experimental observations.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2008

Observation of Superfluidity of Polaritons in Semiconductor Microcavities

One of the most striking manifestations of quantum coherence in interacting boson systems is superfluidity. Exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities are two-dimensional composite bosons predicted to behave as particular quantum fluids. We report the observation of superfluid motion of polaritons created by a laser in a semiconductor microcavity. Superfluidity is investigated in terms of the Landau criterion and manifests itself as the suppression of scattering from defects when the flow velocity is slower than the speed of sound in the fluid. On the other hand, a Cerenkov-like wake pattern is clearly observed when the flow velocity exceeds the speed of sound. The experimental findings are in excellent quantitative agreement with the predictions based on a generalized Gross-Pitaevskii theory, showing that polaritons in microcavities constitute a very rich system for exploring the physics of non-equilibrium quantum fluids.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗
arXiv2008

Reversible Quantum Interface for Tunable Single-sideband Modulation

Using Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT) in a Cesium vapor, we demonstrate experimentally that the quantum state of a light beam can be mapped into the long lived Zeeman coherences of an atomic ground state. Two non-commuting variables carried by light are simultaneously stored and subsequentely read-out, with no noise added. We compare the case where a tunable single sideband is stored independently of the other one to the case where the two symmetrical sidebands are stored using the same EIT transparency window.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2005

Can optical squeezing be generated via polarization self-rotation in a thermal vapour cell?

The traversal of an elliptically polarized optical field through a thermal vapour cell can give rise to a rotation of its polarization axis. This process, known as polarization self-rotation (PSR), has been suggested as a mechanism for producing squeezed light at atomic transition wavelengths. In this paper, we show results of the characterization of PSR in isotopically enhanced Rubidium-87 cells, performed in two independent laboratories. We observed that, contrary to earlier work, the presence of atomic noise in the thermal vapour overwhelms the observation of squeezing. We present a theory that contains atomic noise terms and show that a null result in squeezing is consistent with this theory.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2004

Optical bistability in semiconductor microcavities in the nondegenerate parametric oscillation regime: analogy with the optical parametric oscillator

We report the observation of optical bistability in a microcavity pumped at the "magic angle". Experimental evidence is given in the form of a hysteresis cycle of the nonlinear emission as a function of the pump intensity or the position of the excitation spot. The results can be well understood with simple theoretical considerations that underline the fundamental analogy between our system and an optical parametric oscillator.

cond-mat.str-el↗
arXiv2003

Polarization squeezing in a four-level system

We present a theoretical study of an ensemble of X-like 4-level atoms placed in an optical cavity driven by a linearly polarized field. We show that the self-rotation (SR) process leads to polarization switching (PS). Below the PS threshold, both the mean field mode and the orthogonal vacuum mode are squeezed. We provide a simple analysis of the phenomena responsible for the squeezing and trace the origin of vacuum squeezing not to SR, but to crossed Kerr effect induced by the mean field. Last, we show that this vacuum squeezing can be interpreted as polarization squeezing.

quant-ph↗