Exciton polaritons are quasi-particles formed by the strong coupling of confined photons to quantum well (QW) excitons. The polariton inherit properties from both its light and matter constituents, such as a very small effective mass and very high velocities on one hand, and electric interactions both with other polaritons and external electric fields on the other. These unique set of properties makes excitons polaritons promising for both fundamental research and for technological applications.

Until recently, polaritons were mainly realized in micro-cavity systems [1], but a couple of years ago, it was shown that strong coupling between optical waveguide (WG) modes to QW excitons embedded inside those waveguides leads to the formation of WG polaritons [2]. These WG polaritons propagate along the waveguide with very high group velocities for long distances of hundreds of microns.

Here we report our progress toward a full control of WG polaritons in GaAs heterostructures. We show 2D guiding of WG polaritons, controlling the propagation direction in a 2D optically confined system.  We also report dipolar WG polaritons propagating for hundreds of microns.

[1] Deng, H., Haug, H., & Yamamoto, Y. (2010). Exciton-polariton Bose-Einstein condensation. Reviews of Modern Physics, 82(2), 1489-1537. doi:10.1103/revmodphys.82.1489

[2] Walker, P. M., Tinkler, L., Durska, M., Whittaker, D. M., Luxmoore, I. J., Royall, B., . . . Ritchie, D. A. (2013). Exciton polaritons in semiconductor waveguides. Applied Physics Letters,102(1), 012109. doi:10.1063/1.4773590