Through the looking glass: artificial ’molecules’ open door to ultrafast devices
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Skoltech in Russia have shown that polaritons, the quirky particles that may end up running the quantum supercomputers of the future, can form structures that behave like molecules - and these 'artificial molecules' can potentially be engineered on demand. Their results are published in the journal Physical Review B Letters . Polaritons are quantum particles that consist of a photon and an exciton, another quasiparticle, combining light and matter in a curious union that opens up a multitude of possibilities in next-generation devices. The researchers have shown that geometrically coupled polariton condensates, which appear in semiconductor devices, are capable of simulating molecules with various properties. Ordinary molecules are groups of atoms bound together with molecular bonds, and their physical properties differ from those of their constituent atoms quite drastically: consider the water molecule, H2O, and elemental hydrogen and oxygen. "In our work, we show that clusters of interacting polaritonic and photonic condensates can form a range of exotic and entirely distinct entities - 'molecules' - that can be manipulated artificially," said first author Alexander Johnston, from Cambridge Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.
