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Full-Bloch beams and ultrafast Rabi-rotating vortices

Lorenzo Dominici, David Colas, Antonio Gianfrate, Amir Rahmani, Vincenzo Ardizzone, Dario Ballarini, Milena De Giorgi, Giuseppe Gigli, Fabrice P. Laussy, Daniele Sanvitto, and Nina Voronova
Phys. Rev. Research 3, 013007 – Published 5 January 2021
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Abstract

Strongly coupled quantum fields, such as multicomponent atomic condensates, optical fields, and polaritons, are remarkable systems where the simple dynamics of coupled oscillators can meet the intricate phenomenology of quantum fluids. When the coupling between the components is coherent, not only the particles' number, but also their phase texture that maps the linear and angular momentum, can be exchanged. Here, on a system of exciton polaritons, we have realized a so-called full-Bloch beam: a configuration in which all superpositions of the upper and the lower polaritons—all quantum states of the associated Hilbert space—are simultaneously present at different points of the physical space, evolving in time according to Rabi-oscillatory dynamics. As a result, the light emitted by the cavity displays a peculiar dynamics of spiraling vortices endowed with oscillating linear and angular momenta and exhibiting ultrafast motion of their cores with striking accelerations to arbitrary speeds. This remarkable vortex motion is shown to result from distortions of the trajectories by a homeomorphic mapping between the Rabi rotation of the full wave function on the Bloch sphere and Apollonian circles in the real space where the observation is made. Such full-Bloch beams offer prospects at a fundamental level regarding their topological properties or in the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and the Rabi-rotating vortices they yield should lead to interesting applications such as ultrafast optical tweezers.

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  • Received 17 January 2020
  • Revised 11 November 2020
  • Accepted 27 November 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.013007

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsInterdisciplinary PhysicsAtomic, Molecular & OpticalFluid Dynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Lorenzo Dominici1,*, David Colas2, Antonio Gianfrate1, Amir Rahmani3, Vincenzo Ardizzone1, Dario Ballarini1, Milena De Giorgi1, Giuseppe Gigli1,4, Fabrice P. Laussy5,6, Daniele Sanvitto1,7,†, and Nina Voronova5,8,‡

  • 1CNR NANOTEC, Istituto di Nanotecnologia, Via Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy
  • 2ARC Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies, School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia
  • 3Department of Physics, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran
  • 4Dipartimento di Matematica e Fisica E. de Giorgi, Universitá Del Salento, Campus Ecotekne, via Monteroni, Lecce, 73100, Italy
  • 5Russian Quantum Center, Skolkovo innovation city, 121205 Moscow, Russia
  • 6Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Wolverhampton, Wulfruna Street, WV1 1LY, United Kingdom
  • 7INFN sezione di Lecce, 73100 Lecce, Italy
  • 8National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), 115409 Moscow, Russia

  • *lorenzo.dominici@nanotec.cnr.it
  • dsanvitto@gmail.com
  • nsvoronova@mephi.ru

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Vol. 3, Iss. 1 — January - March 2021

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