Spin Textures of Exciton-Polaritons in a Tunable Microcavity with Large TE-TM Splitting

Phys Rev Lett. 2015 Dec 11;115(24):246401. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.246401. Epub 2015 Dec 8.

Abstract

We report an extended family of spin textures of zero-dimensional exciton-polaritons spatially confined in tunable open microcavity structures. The transverse-electric-transverse-magnetic (TE-TM) splitting, which is enhanced in the open cavity structures, leads to polariton eigenstates carrying quantized spin vortices. Depending on the strength and anisotropy of the cavity confining potential and of the TE-TM induced splitting, which can be tuned via the excitonic or photonic fractions, the exciton-polariton emissions exhibit either spin-vortex-like patterns or linear polarization, in good agreement with theoretical modeling.