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| Solid-state systems appear today as excellent platforms to study a wide range of non-linear processes and to simulate non-linear Hamiltonians. In this sense, a remarkable system is that of polaritons in semiconductor microcavities. Polaritons are mixed light-matter quasiparticles arising from the strong coupling between excitons and photons confined in a two-dimensional semiconductor microcavity. They can be easily manipulated with lasers, detected using standard optical techniques, and present strong interactions. Additionally, they can condense in a coherent macroscopic state governed by a non-linear Schrodinger equation with strong losses due to the scape of polaritons in the form of photons out of the cavity. This condense state is, therefore, strongly out of equilibrium and it needs to be continuously pumped. Polaritons are thus an excellent physical system to study experimentally the solutions of a rich class of non-conservative non-linear Schrodinger-like equations.
Here we will present experiments showing polariton dynamics in different external potentials, such as (i) two coupled wells in which we observe non-linear oscillations and macroscopic self-trapping, (ii) a hexagonal ring structure where spin-orbit coupling can be engineered, (iii) a honeycomb lattice where we have designed both Dirac and flat bands for polaritons. |
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