Lattices of Giant Rydberg Polaritons

我们的目标是将光子与里德伯激子（具有高主量子数的电子-空穴对的激发束缚态）杂交以形成极化激元。Ryberg激子是特别感兴趣的，因为它们相对于具有原子状结构的其他系统具有大的尺寸（~2um）。这种大尺寸导致相邻激子之间的强烈排斥效应。通过使用微腔将光子耦合到这些激子，我们可以实现光子之间的强间接相互作用，从而构建强相关光子的大型量子网络，用于未来的量子模拟器。选择用于产生激子的半导体是氧化亚铜（Cu 2 O），因为其“黄色”激子具有强结合能，其允许达到高达n=25的量子数。

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.