Asynchronous Locking in Metamaterials of Fluids of Light and Sound

D. L. CHAFATINOS, A. S. KUZNETSOV, A. A. REYNOSO, G. USAJ, P. SESIN, I. PAPUCCIO, A. E. BRUCHHAUSEN, K. BIERMANN, P V. SANTOS, A. FAINSTEIN

NATURE COMMUNICATIONS

Springer

Lugar: Frankfurt; Año: 2023 vol. 14 p. 3485 - 3485

2041-1723

Lattices of exciton-polariton condensates represent an attractive platform forthe study and implementation of non-Hermitian bosonic quantum systemswith strong non-linear interactions. The possibility to actuate on them with atime dependent drive could provide for example themeans to induce resonantinter-level transitions, or to perform Floquet engineering or Landau-Zener-Stückelberg state preparation. Here, we introduce polaromechanical metamaterials,two-dimensional arrays of μm-sized traps confining zerodimensionallight-matter polariton fluids and GHz phonons. A strong excitonmediatedpolariton-phonon interaction induces a time-dependent inter-sitepolariton coupling J(t) with remarkable consequences for the dynamics. Whenlocally perturbed by continuous wave optical excitation, a mechanical selfoscillationsets-in and polaritons respond by locking the energy detuningbetween neighbor sites at integer multiples of the phonon energy, evidencingasynchronous locking involving the polariton and phonon fields. These resultsopen the path for the coherent control of dissipative quantumlight fluids withhypersound in a scalable platform.