Polarization shaping of Poincaré beams by polariton oscillations

• Published in: Light, science & applications Vol. 4; no. 11; p. e350
• Main Authors: Colas, David, Dominici, Lorenzo, Donati, Stefano, Pervishko, Anastasiia A, Liew, Timothy CH, Shelykh, Ivan A, Ballarini, Dario, de Giorgi, Milena, Bramati, Alberto, Gigli, Giuseppe, Valle, Elena del, Laussy, Fabrice P, Kavokin, Alexey V, Sanvitto, Daniele
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01-11-2015; Springer Nature B.V; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 639/766/400/2797; 639/766/400/584; Applied and Technical Physics; Atomic; Classical and Continuum Physics; Condensed Matter; Lasers; Mathematical analysis; Molecular; Optical and Plasma Physics; Optical Devices; Optics; original-article; Oscillations; Photonics; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Platforms; Poincare spheres; Polaritons; Polarization; Precession; Vectors (mathematics); full Poincaré beams; Rabi oscillations; polarization; polaritons; pulse shaping
• ISSN: 2047-7538; 2095-5545; 2047-7538
• DOI: 10.1038/lsa.2015.123

We propose theoretically and demonstrate experimentally the generation of light pulses whose polarization varies temporally to cover selected areas of the Poincaré sphere with both tunable swirling speed and total duration (1 ps and 10 ps, respectively, in our implementation). The effect relies on the Rabi oscillations of two polariton polarized fields excited by two counter-polarized and delayed pulses. The superposition of the oscillating fields result in the precession of the Stokes vector of the emitted light while polariton lifetime imbalance results in its drift from a circle of controllable radius on the Poincaré sphere to a single point at long times. The positioning of the initial circle and final point allows to engineer the type of polarization spanning, including a full sweeping of the Poincaré sphere. The universality and simplicity of the scheme should allow for the deployment of time-varying full-Poincaré polarization fields in a variety of platforms, timescales, and regimes.
Polarization shaping: full Poincaré beams realized in time
An international team has generated light pulses whose polarization varies in time over selected areas of the Poincaré sphere. Beam shaping generally involves tailoring the phase and amplitude of a beam, but to fully exploit the vectorial nature of light it is desirable to extend this degree of control to polarization. Lorenzo Dominici and co-workers theoretically propose a new type of pulsed polarized light—one that adopts all polarization states during the pulse duration. They then demonstrate it experimentally in a semiconductor microcavity that has strong exciton–photon coupling. Since the mechanism is based on a ubiquitous effect of light–matter interactions, namely Rabi oscillations, it can be realized in both classical and quantum regimes as well as on various platforms and time scales. It can also be extended to non-optical systems.