2018/01/31 by Lorenzo Dominici, David Colas, Antonio Gianfrate +8 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Angular momentum #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Optical vortex #Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics #Phenomenology (philosophy) #Quantum #Rotation (mathematics) #Strong Light-Matter Interactions #Ultrashort pulse #Vortex #Wave function #Wigner distribution function #cond-mat.quant-gas #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevresearch.3.013007
published as Phys. Rev. Research 3, 013007 (2021) · Published version, 18 pages, 8 figures, 4 ancillary movies
openalex created_date 2020/04/24 · openalex publication_date 2021/01/05 · arxiv created 2021/04/11 · arxiv updated 2021/04/13 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Strongly-coupled quantum fields, such as multi-component 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 polariton -- 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 momentum 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 wavefunction on the Bloch sphere and Apollonian circles in the real space where the observation is made. Such full-Bloch beams offer new 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.