Lattices of Giant Rydberg Polaritons

我们的目标是将光子与里德堡激子(具有高主量子数的电子-空穴对的激发束缚态)杂交，形成极化子。相对于其他具有类原子结构的系统，里伯格激子具有较大的尺寸(~2微米)，因而引起了人们的极大兴趣。如此大的尺寸导致了相邻激子之间的强烈排斥效应。通过利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，从而构建一个巨大的强关联光子量子网络，用于未来的量子模拟器。选择用来产生激子的半导体是氧化亚铜(Cu2O)，因为它的黄色激子具有很强的结合能，这使得量子数可以达到n=25。

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.