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. 2022 Jul;21(7):767-772.
doi: 10.1038/s41563-022-01230-4. Epub 2022 Apr 14.

Rydberg exciton-polaritons in a Cu2O microcavity

Konstantinos Orfanakis #  1 , Sai Kiran Rajendran #  1 , Valentin Walther  2   3 , Thomas Volz  4   5 , Thomas Pohl  6 , Hamid Ohadi  7
Affiliations

Rydberg exciton-polaritons in a Cu2O microcavity

Konstantinos Orfanakis et al. Nat Mater. 2022 Jul.

Abstract

Giant Rydberg excitons with principal quantum numbers as high as n = 25 have been observed in cuprous oxide (Cu2O), a semiconductor in which the exciton diameter can become as large as ∼1 μm. The giant dimension of these excitons results in excitonic interaction enhancements of orders of magnitude. Rydberg exciton-polaritons, formed by the strong coupling of Rydberg excitons to cavity photons, are a promising route to exploit these interactions and achieve a scalable, strongly correlated solid-state platform. However, the strong coupling of these excitons to cavity photons has remained elusive. Here, by embedding a thin Cu2O crystal into a Fabry-Pérot microcavity, we achieve strong coupling of light to Cu2O Rydberg excitons up to n = 6 and demonstrate the formation of Cu2O Rydberg exciton-polaritons. These results pave the way towards realizing strongly interacting exciton-polaritons and exploring strongly correlated phases of matter using light on a chip.

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