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Published July 1, 2015 | Submitted + Published
Journal Article Open

Topological Polaritons

Abstract

The interaction between light and matter can give rise to novel topological states. This principle was recently exemplified in Floquet topological insulators, where classical light was used to induce a topological electronic band structure. Here, in contrast, we show that mixing single photons with excitons can result in new topological polaritonic states—or "topolaritons." Taken separately, the underlying photons and excitons are topologically trivial. Combined appropriately, however, they give rise to nontrivial polaritonic bands with chiral edge modes allowing for unidirectional polariton propagation. The main ingredient in our construction is an exciton-photon coupling with a phase that winds in momentum space. We demonstrate how this winding emerges from the finite-momentum mixing between s-type and p-type bands in the electronic system and an applied Zeeman field. We discuss the requirements for obtaining a sizable topological gap in the polariton spectrum and propose practical ways to realize topolaritons in semiconductor quantum wells and monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides.

Additional Information

© 2015 American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Received 25 August 2014; revised manuscript received 29 January 2015; published 1 July 2015. We are grateful to Bernd Rosenow, Alexander Janot, and Andrei Faraon for valuable discussions. This work was funded by the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, a NSF Physics Frontiers Center with support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through Grant No. GBMF1250, NSF through No. DMR-1410435, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Bi-National Science Foundation and I-Core: the Israeli Excellence Center "Circle of Light," and Darpa under funding for FENA. Support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) is also gratefully acknowledged.

Attached Files

Published - PhysRevX.5.031001.pdf

Submitted - 1406.4156v3.pdf

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August 20, 2023
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