Talk by Prof. Vinod M. Menon, Department of Physics, City College of New York

Exciton-polaritons: From room temperature out-of-equilibrium condensates to manipulating correlated materials

Talk by Prof. Vinod M. Menon, Department of Physics, City College of New YorkStrong exciton-photon interaction results in the formation of half-light half-matter quasiparticles called exciton-polaritons that take on the properties of both its constituents. In this talk I will first introduce the concept of exciton-polariton formation in low-dimensional semiconductors. Following this, I will discuss the formation of out-of-equilibrium condensates at room temperature using polaritons formed using excitons in organic molecules [1]. Approaches to create condensate lattices in such systems [2] and their potential application as Hamiltonian simulators will be presented.

In the second part of the talk, I will introduce magneto exciton-polaritons realized in van der Waals magnets (CrSBr) and the possibility of controlling the magneto-optic response by tuning the light or matter fraction of the polariton states [3]. In addition to tuning the magneto-optic response, we will also show evidence of coupling between coherent magnons and polaritons through time resolved measurements where the fingerprint of GHz magnon oscillations is observed on the polariton states in the near infrared. Finally, I will present our recent work on the role of magnons on nonlinear exciton-exciton interaction in CrSBr [4].

CHEM Host: Junsheng Chen and Bo W. Laursen

References:
[1] P. Deshmukh et al. ACS Photonics vol. 11, p. 348 (2024).
[2] R. Yadav et al. Nano Letters vol. 24, p. 4945 (2024).
[3] F. Dirnberger et al. Nature vol. 620, p. 533 (2023).
[4] B. Datta, P. Adak, S. Yu et al., Nature Materials (2025), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-025-02183-0