High-speed flow of interacting organic polaritons

Light Sci Appl. 2017 Feb 24;6(2):e16212. doi: 10.1038/lsa.2016.212. eCollection 2017 Feb.

Abstract

The strong coupling of an excitonic transition with an electromagnetic mode results in composite quasi-particles called exciton polaritons, which have been shown to combine the best properties of their individual components in semiconductor microcavities. However, the physics and applications of polariton flows in organic materials and at room temperature are still unexplored because of the poor photon confinement in such structures. Here, we demonstrate that polaritons formed by the hybridization of organic excitons with a Bloch surface wave are able to propagate for hundreds of microns showing remarkable third-order nonlinear interactions upon high injection density. These findings pave the way for the study of organic nonlinear light-matter fluxes and for a technologically promising route of the realization of dissipation-less on-chip polariton devices operating at room temperature.

Keywords: 2D optics; optical nonlinearity; organic materials; polaritons; surface waves.