Giant Photoelasticity of Polaritons for Detection of Coherent Phonons in a Superlattice with Quantum Sensitivity

Kobecki, Michal; Scherbakov, Alexey V.; Kukhtaruk, Serhii M.; Yaremkevich, Dmytro D.; Henksmeier, Tobias; Trapp, Alexander; Reuter, Dirk; Gusev, Vitalyi E.; Akimov, Andrey V.; Bayer, Manfred

Abstract

The functionality of phonon-based quantum devices largely depends on the efficiency of the interaction of phonons with other excitations. For phonon frequencies above 20 GHz, generation and detection of the phonon quanta can be monitored through photons. The photon-phonon interaction can be enormously strengthened by involving an intermediate resonant quasiparticle, e.g., an exciton, with which a photon forms a polariton. In this work, we discover a giant photoelasticity of exciton-polaritons in a short-period superlattice and exploit it to detect propagating acoustic phonons. We demonstrate that 42 GHz coherent phonons can be detected with extremely high sensitivity in the time domain Brillouin oscillations by probing with photons in the spectral vicinity of the polariton resonance.

Citation

Kobecki, M., Scherbakov, A. V., Kukhtaruk, S. M., Yaremkevich, D. D., Henksmeier, T., Trapp, A., Reuter, D., Gusev, V. E., Akimov, A. V., & Bayer, M. (2022). Giant Photoelasticity of Polaritons for Detection of Coherent Phonons in a Superlattice with Quantum Sensitivity. Physical Review Letters, 128(15), Article 157401. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.128.157401

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 25, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Apr 12, 2022
• Publication Date: Apr 15, 2022
• Deposit Date: May 17, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: May 20, 2022
• Journal: Physical Review Letters
• Print ISSN: 0031-9007
• Electronic ISSN: 1079-7114
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 128
• Issue: 15
• Article Number: 157401
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.128.157401
• Keywords: General Physics and Astronomy
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/8131029
• Publisher URL: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.157401