Lattices of Giant Rydberg Polaritons

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We are aiming to hybridise photons with Rydberg excitons (excited bound states of electron-hole pairs with high principal quantum numbers) to form polaritons. Ryberg excitons are of particular interest due to their large dimensions (~2um) relative to other systems with atom-like structure. This large size causes a strong effect of repulsion between neighbouring excitons. By coupling photons to these excitons via the use of microcavities, we may achieve strong, indirect interactions between photons and thereby build a large quantum network of strongly correlated photons for use in future quantum simulators. The semiconductor chosen for producing the excitons is cuprous oxide (Cu2O) since its 'yellow' excitons have strong binding energies which allows for quantum numbers up to n=25 to be reached.