Motion of patterns in polariton quantum fluids with spin-orbit interaction

• Main Authors: Liew, Timothy Chi Hin, Egorov, O. A., Werner, A., Ostrovskaya, E. A., Lederer, F.
• Other Authors: School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science::Physics
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/103651; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/20012
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

We report on a remarkable effect of pseudospin precession on the collective motion of exciton-polaritons in a microresonator coherently driven by a linearly polarized pump. In particular, we show that hexagonal patterns can undergo a spontaneous symmetry breaking of their polarization and start a uniform motion in the plane of the resonator. Similar to the optical spin Hall effect, this becomes possible due to a spin-orbit interaction induced by a longitudinal-transverse splitting (TE-TM splitting) of the photonic resonator mode. We derive a simple analytical expression for the drift velocity of the patterns.