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CAVITY POLARITONS

Topological interface of light

Nature Physics volume 18, pages 609–610 (2022)Cite this article

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Upon combining dissipative and nonlinear effects in a bipartite lattice of cavity polaritons, dissipatively stabilized bulk gap solitons emerge, which create a topological interface.

Cavity polaritons are bosonic light–matter quasiparticles resulting from the strong coupling between quantum-well excitons and photons confined in a cavity1. Large optical nonlinearities — a result of the strong interactions between excitons — make cavity polaritons an attractive experimental way to probe interacting topological phases. Combining these strong nonlinearities with the inherent losses of photons, Nicolas Pernet and colleagues, writing in Nature Physics, have now studied a driven-dissipative version of the Su–Schrieffer–Heeger (SSH) model in a polariton lattice2.

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Fig. 1: Soliton profiles on a SSH chain with pillar sublattices A and B.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Erlangen, Germany

    Flore K. Kunst

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  1. Flore K. Kunst
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Correspondence to Flore K. Kunst.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Kunst, F.K. Topological interface of light. Nat. Phys. 18, 609–610 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01582-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01582-3

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