Origin of Exciton-Polariton Interactions and Decoupled Dark States Dynamics in 2D Hybrid Perovskite Quantum Wells.

The realization of efficient optical devices depends on the ability to harness strong nonlinearities, which are challenging to achieve with standard photonic systems. Exciton-polaritons formed in hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites offer a promising alternative, exhibiting strong interactions at room temperature (RT). Despite recent demonstrations showcasing a robust nonlinear response, further progress is hindered by an incomplete understanding of the microscopic mechanisms governing polariton interactions in perovskite-based strongly coupled systems. Here, we investigate the nonlinear properties of quasi-2D dodecylammonium lead iodide perovskite (n3-C12) crystals embedded in a planar microcavity. Polarization-resolved pump-probe measurements reveal the contribution of indirect exchange interactions assisted by dark states formation. Additionally, we identify a strong dependence of the unique spin-dependent interaction of polaritons on sample detuning. The results are pivotal for the advancement of polaritonics, and the tunability of the robust spin-dependent anisotropic interaction in n3-C12 perovskites makes this material a powerful choice for the realization of polaritonic circuits.

Electric-Field Mapping of Optically Perturbed CdTe Radiation Detectors.

In radiation detectors, the spatial distribution of the electric field plays a fundamental role in their operation. Access to this field distribution is of strategic importance, especially when investigating the perturbing effects induced by incident radiation. For example, one dangerous effect that prevents their proper operation is the accumulation of internal space charge. Here, we probe the two-dimensional electric field in a Schottky CdTe detector using the Pockels effect and report on its local perturbation after exposure to an optical beam at the anode electrode. Our electro-optical imaging setup, together with a custom processing routine, allows the extraction of the electric-field vector maps and their dynamics during a voltage bias-optical exposure sequence. The results are in agreement with numerical simulations, allowing us to confirm a two-level model based on a dominant deep level. Such a simple model is indeed able to fully account for both the temporal and spatial dynamics of the perturbed electric field. This approach thus allows a deeper understanding of the main mechanisms affecting the non-equilibrium electric-field distribution in CdTe Schottky detectors, such as those leading to polarization. In the future, it could also be used to predict and improve the performance of planar or electrode-segmented detectors.

Interleukin-17A-Correlated Myocarditis in Patients with Psoriasis: Cardiac Recovery following Secukinumab Administration.

(1) Background: Psoriasis (PS) is a common immune-mediated disease of the skin with possible extension to joints, aorta and eye. Myocardial inflammation has rarely been suggested. (2) Aims: Report of PS-related myocarditis. (3) Methods and Results: One hundred consecutive patients with PS were screened for cardiac involvement. Among them, five male patients (aged 56 ± 9.5 years) with a moderate-severe form of PS showed dilated cardiomyopathy (LVEF < 35%) with normal coronary arteries and valves. They underwent a left-ventricular endomyocardial biopsy for evaluation of myocardial substrate. Endomyocardial samples were processed for histology and immunohistochemistry, including myocardial expression of Toll-Like Receptor 4 (TLR4) and interleukin-17A (IL-17A), which play a major role in PS pathogenesis. Real-time PCRs were carried out for cardiotropic viruses, and Western blot analysis was conducted for myocardial expression of IL-17A. Patients' sera were tested for anti-heart autoantibodies. Active lymphocytic myocarditis was revealed in all five patients, characterized by an absence of viral genomes with PCR, positive anti-heart autoantibodies, overexpression of TLR-4 and enhancement of IL-17-A during western blot analysis, showing a 2.48-fold increase in psoriatic myocarditis compared with no psoriatic myocarditis and a six-fold increase compared to myocardial controls. Treatment included combination of prednisone (1 mg/kg daily for 4 weeks, tapered to 0.33 mg/kg) and azathioprine (2 mg/kg, daily) in 3 pts or secukinumab (SK, 150 mg/weekly for 4 weeks followed by 150 mg/monthly) in 2 pts for 6 months. LVEDD and LVEF improved in the first 3 pts (-14% and + 118%, respectively), while they completely recovered (LVEF > 50%) in the last 2 pts on SK. (4) Conclusions: IL-17A-related myocarditis can occur in up to 5% of patients with PS. It manifests as progressive dilated cardiomyopathy. It may completely recover following SK administration.

Left Ventricular Adverse Remodeling in Ischemic Heart Disease: Emerging Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging Biomarkers.

Post-ischemic left ventricular (LV) remodeling is a biologically complex process involving myocardial structure, LV shape, and function, beginning early after myocardial infarction (MI) and lasting until 1 year. Adverse remodeling is a post-MI maladaptive process that has been associated with long-term poor clinical outcomes. Cardiac Magnetic Resonance (CMR) is the best tool to define adverse remodeling because of its ability to accurately measure LV end-diastolic and end-systolic volumes and their variation over time and to characterize the underlying myocardial changes. Therefore, CMR is the gold standard method to assess in vivo myocardial infarction extension and to detect the presence of microvascular obstruction and intramyocardial hemorrhage, both associated with adverse remodeling. In recent times, new CMR quantitative biomarkers emerged as predictive of post-ischemic adverse remodeling, such as T1 mapping, myocardial strain, and 4D flow. Additionally, CMR T1 mapping imaging may depict infarcted tissue and assess diffuse myocardial fibrosis by using surrogate markers such as extracellular volume fraction, which may predict functional recovery or risk stratification of remodeling. Finally, there is emerging evidence supporting the utility of intracavitary blood flow kinetic energy and hemodynamic features assessed by the 4D flow CMR technique as early predictors of remodeling.

Optical Writing and Electro-Optic Imaging of Reversible Space Charges in Semi-Insulating CdTe Diodes.

Deep levels control the space charge in electrically compensated semi-insulating materials. They limit the performance of radiation detectors but their interaction with free carriers can be favorably exploited in these devices to manipulate the spatial distribution of the electric field by optical beams. By using semi-insulating CdTe diodes as a case study, our results show that optical doping functionalities are achieved. As such, a highly stable, flux-dependent, reversible and spatially localized space charge is induced by a line-shaped optical beam focused on the cathode contact area. Real-time non-invasive imaging of the electric field is obtained through the Pockels effect. A simple and convenient method to retrieve the two-dimensional electric field components is presented. Numerical simulations involving just one deep level responsible for the electrical compensation confirm the experimental findings and help to identify the underlying mechanism and critical parameters enabling the optical writing functionalities.

Shaping the topology of light with a moving Rabi-oscillating vortex.

Quantum vortices are the analogue of classical vortices in optics, Bose-Einstein condensates, superfluids and superconductors, where they provide the elementary mode of rotation and orbital angular momentum. While they mediate important pair interactions and phase transitions in nonlinear fluids, their linear dynamics is useful for the shaping of complex light, as well as for topological entities in multi-component systems, such as full Bloch beams. Here, setting a quantum vortex into directional motion in an open-dissipative fluid of microcavity polaritons, we observe the self-splitting of the packet, leading to the trembling movement of its center of mass, whereas the vortex core undergoes ultrafast spiraling along diverging and converging circles, in a sub-picosecond precessing fashion. This singular dynamics is accompanied by vortex-antivortex pair creation and annihilation and a periodically changing topological charge. The spiraling and branching mechanics represent a direct manifestation of the underlying Bloch pseudospin space, whose mapping is shown to be rotating and splitting itself. Its reshaping is due to three simultaneous drives along the distinct directions of momentum and complex frequency, by means of the differential group velocities, Rabi frequency and dissipation rates, which are natural assets in coupled fields such as polaritons. This state, displaying linear momentum dressed with oscillating angular momentum, confirms the richness of multi-component and open quantum fluids and their innate potentiality to implement sophisticated and dynamical topological textures of light.

Tuning of the Berry curvature in 2D perovskite polaritons.

The engineering of the energy dispersion of polaritons in microcavities through nanofabrication or through the exploitation of intrinsic material and cavity anisotropies has demonstrated many intriguing effects related to topology and emergent gauge fields such as the anomalous quantum Hall and Rashba effects. Here we show how we can obtain different Berry curvature distributions of polariton bands in a strongly coupled organic-inorganic two-dimensional perovskite single-crystal microcavity. The spatial anisotropy of the perovskite crystal combined with photonic spin-orbit coupling produce two Hamilton diabolical points in the dispersion. An external magnetic field breaks time-reversal symmetry owing to the exciton Zeeman splitting and lifts the degeneracy of the diabolical points. As a result, the bands possess non-zero integral Berry curvatures, which we directly measure by state tomography. In addition to the determination of the different Berry curvatures of the multimode microcavity dispersions, we can also modify the Berry curvature distribution, the so-called band geometry, within each band by tuning external parameters, such as temperature, magnetic field and sample thickness.

Dynamics of a Vortex Lattice in an Expanding Polariton Quantum Fluid.

If a quantum fluid is driven with enough angular momentum, at equilibrium the ground state of the system is given by a lattice of quantized vortices whose density is prescribed by the quantization of circulation. We report on the first experimental study of the Feynman-Onsager relation in a nonequilibrium polariton fluid, free to expand and rotate. Upon initially imprinting a lattice of vortices in the quantum fluid, we track the vortex core positions on picosecond timescales. We observe an accelerated stretching of the lattice and an outward bending of the linear trajectories of the vortices, due to the repulsive polariton interactions. Access to the full density and phase fields allows us to detect a small deviation from the Feynman-Onsager rule in terms of a transverse velocity component, due to the density gradient of the fluid envelope acting on the vortex lattice.

Comprehensive disease control in systemic lupus erythematosus.

OBJECTIVES: We evaluated a monocentric SLE cohort in order to assess the frequency of Lupus comprehensive disease control (LupusCDC), a condition defined by the achievement of remission and the absence of damage progression. METHODS: Our longitudinal analysis included SLE patients with 5-years follow-up and at least one visit per year. Disease activity was assessed by SLE Disease Activity Index 2000 (SLEDAI-2K) and three different remission levels were evaluated (Complete Remission, CR; Clinical remission off-corticosteroids; clinical remission on-corticosteroids). Chronic damage was assessed according to SLICC Damage Index (SDI). LupusCDC was defined as remission achievement for at least one year plus absence of chronic damage progression in the previous one year. A machine learning based analysis was carried out, applying and comparing Nonlinear Support Vector Machines (SVM) models and Decision Trees (DT), whereas features ranking was performed with the ReliefF algorithm. RESULTS: We evaluated 172 patients [M/F 16/156, median age 49 years (IQR 16.7), median disease duration 180 months (IQR 156)]. SDI values (baseline mean±SD 0.7 ± 1.1) significantly increased during the follow-up period. In all time-points analyzed, LupusCDC including CR was the most frequently detected. The failure to reach this condition was significantly associated with renal involvement and with the intake of immunosuppressant drugs and glucocorticoid (GC). Ten patients (5.8%) have maintained LupusCDC during the whole 5-year follow-up: these patients had never presented renal involvement and showed lower prevalence of anti-phospholipid antibodies (p = 0.0001). Finally, the prevalence of GC intake was significantly lower (p = 0.0001). The application of machine learning models showed that the available features were able to provide significant information to build predictive models with an AUC score of 0.703 ± 0.02 for DT and 0.713 ± 0.02 for SVM. CONCLUSIONS: Our data on a monocentric cohort suggest that the LupusCDC can efficaciously merge into one outcome SLE-related disease activity and chronic damage in order to perform an all-around evaluation of SLE patients.

Improved Photostability in Fluorinated 2D Perovskite Single Crystals.

Hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites are very promising semiconductors for many optoelectronic applications, although their extensive use is limited by their poor stability under environmental conditions. In this work, we synthesize two-dimensional perovskite single crystals and investigate their optical and structural evolution under continuous light irradiation. We found that the hydrophobic nature of the fluorinated component, together with the absence of grain boundary defects, lead to improved material stability thanks to the creation of a robust barrier that preserve the crystalline structure, hindering photo-degradation processes usually promoted by oxygen and moisture.

Quantum hydrodynamics of a single particle.

Semiconductor devices are strong competitors in the race for the development of quantum computational systems. In this work, we interface two semiconductor building blocks of different dimensionalities with complementary properties: (1) a quantum dot hosting a single exciton and acting as a nearly ideal single-photon emitter and (2) a quantum well in a 2D microcavity sustaining polaritons, which are known for their strong interactions and unique hydrodynamic properties, including ultrafast real-time monitoring of their propagation and phase mapping. In the present experiment, we can thus observe how the injected single particles propagate and evolve inside the microcavity, giving rise to hydrodynamic features typical of macroscopic systems despite their genuine intrinsic quantum nature. In the presence of a structural defect, we observe the celebrated quantum interference of a single particle that produces fringes reminiscent of wave propagation. While this behavior could be theoretically expected, our imaging of such an interference pattern, together with a measurement of antibunching, constitutes the first demonstration of spatial mapping of the self-interference of a single quantum particle impinging on an obstacle.

Polaritonic Neuromorphic Computing Outperforms Linear Classifiers.

Machine learning software applications are ubiquitous in many fields of science and society for their outstanding capability to solve computationally vast problems like the recognition of patterns and regularities in big data sets. In spite of these impressive achievements, such processors are still based on the so-called von Neumann architecture, which is a bottleneck for faster and power-efficient neuromorphic computation. Therefore, one of the main goals of research is to conceive physical realizations of artificial neural networks capable of performing fully parallel and ultrafast operations. Here we show that lattices of exciton-polariton condensates accomplish neuromorphic computing with outstanding accuracy thanks to their high optical nonlinearity. We demonstrate that our neural network significantly increases the recognition efficiency compared with the linear classification algorithms on one of the most widely used benchmarks, the MNIST problem, showing a concrete advantage from the integration of optical systems in neural network architectures.

Directional Goldstone waves in polariton condensates close to equilibrium.

Quantum fluids of light are realized in semiconductor microcavities using exciton-polaritons, solid-state quasi-particles with a light mass and sizeable interactions. Here, we use the microscopic analogue of oceanographic techniques to measure the excitation spectrum of a thermalised polariton condensate. Increasing the fluid density, we demonstrate the transition from a free-particle parabolic dispersion to a linear, sound-like Goldstone mode characteristic of superfluids at equilibrium. Notably, we reveal the effect of an asymmetric pumping by showing that collective excitations are created with a definite direction with respect to the condensate. Furthermore, we measure the critical sound speed for polariton superfluids close to equilibrium.

Self-Trapping of Exciton-Polariton Condensates in GaAs Microcavities.

The self-trapping of exciton-polariton condensates is demonstrated and explained by the formation of a new polaronlike state. Above the polariton lasing threshold, local variation of the lattice temperature provides the mechanism for an attractive interaction between polaritons. Because of this attraction, the condensate collapses into a small bright spot. Its position and momentum variances approach the Heisenberg quantum limit. The self-trapping does not require either a resonant driving force or a presence of defects. The trapped state is stabilized by the phonon-assisted stimulated scattering of excitons into the polariton condensate. While the formation mechanism of the observed self-trapped state is similar to the Landau-Pekar polaron model, this state is populated by several thousands of quasiparticles, in a striking contrast to the conventional single-particle polaron state.

Quantum Nature of Light in Nonstoichiometric Bulk Perovskites.

Sources of single photons are a fundamental brick in the development of quantum information technologies. Great efforts have been made so far in the realization of reliable, highly efficient, and on demand quantum sources that could show an easy integration with quantum devices. This has recently culminated in the use of solid state quantum dots as promising candidates for future sources of quantum technologies. However, some challenges, like their complex fabrication, random distribution, and difficult integrability with silicon technology, could hinder their broad application, making necessary the study of alternative systems. In this work, we clearly demonstrate single photon emission from quantum dots formed in nonstoichiometric bulk perovskites. Their simple growing procedures, exceptional stability under constant illumination, easy control of their optical properties, as well as ease of integrability make these materials very interesting candidates for the development of quantum light sources in the near-infrared.

First observation of the quantized exciton-polariton field and effect of interactions on a single polariton.

Polaritons are quasi-particles that originate from the coupling of light with matter and that demonstrate quantum phenomena at the many-particle mesoscopic level, such as Bose-Einstein condensation and superfluidity. A highly sought and long-time missing feature of polaritons is a genuine quantum manifestation of their dynamics at the single-particle level. Although they are conceptually perceived as entangled states and theoretical proposals abound for an explicit manifestation of their single-particle properties, so far their behavior has remained fully accounted for by classical and mean-field theories. We report the first experimental demonstration of a genuinely quantum state of the microcavity polariton field, by swapping a photon for a polariton in a two-photon entangled state generated by parametric downconversion. When bringing this single-polariton quantum state in contact with a polariton condensate, we observe a disentangling with the external photon. This manifestation of a polariton quantum state involving a single quantum unlocks new possibilities for quantum information processing with interacting bosons.

Interactions and scattering of quantum vortices in a polariton fluid.

Quantum vortices, the quantized version of classical vortices, play a prominent role in superfluid and superconductor phase transitions. However, their exploration at a particle level in open quantum systems has gained considerable attention only recently. Here we study vortex pair interactions in a resonant polariton fluid created in a solid-state microcavity. By tracking the vortices on picosecond time scales, we reveal the role of nonlinearity, as well as of density and phase gradients, in driving their rotational dynamics. Such effects are also responsible for the split of composite spin-vortex molecules into elementary half-vortices, when seeding opposite vorticity between the two spinorial components. Remarkably, we also observe that vortices placed in close proximity experience a pull-push scenario leading to unusual scattering-like events that can be described by a tunable effective potential. Understanding vortex interactions can be useful in quantum hydrodynamics and in the development of vortex-based lattices, gyroscopes, and logic devices.

Topological order and thermal equilibrium in polariton condensates.

The Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition from a disordered to a quasi-ordered state, mediated by the proliferation of topological defects in two dimensions, governs seemingly remote physical systems ranging from liquid helium, ultracold atoms and superconducting thin films to ensembles of spins. Here we observe such a transition in a short-lived gas of exciton-polaritons, bosonic light-matter particles in semiconductor microcavities. The observed quasi-ordered phase, characteristic for an equilibrium two-dimensional bosonic gas, with a decay of coherence in both spatial and temporal domains with the same algebraic exponent, is reproduced with numerical solutions of stochastic dynamics, proving that the mechanism of pairing of the topological defects (vortices) is responsible for the transition to the algebraic order. This is made possible thanks to long polariton lifetimes in high-quality samples and in a reservoir-free region. Our results show that the joint measurement of coherence both in space and time is required to characterize driven-dissipative phase transitions and enable the investigation of topological ordering in open systems.

Superluminal X-waves in a polariton quantum fluid.

In this work, we experimentally demonstrate for the first time the spontaneous generation of two-dimensional exciton-polariton X-waves. X-waves belong to the family of localized packets that can sustain their shape without spreading, even in the linear regime. This allows the wavepacket to maintain its shape and size for very low densities and very long times compared to soliton waves, which always necessitate a nonlinearity to compensate the diffusion. Here, we exploit the polariton nonlinearity and uniquely structured dispersion, comprising both positive- and negative-mass curvatures, to trigger an asymmetric four-wave mixing in momentum space. This ultimately enables the self-formation of a spatial X-wave front. Using ultrafast imaging experiments, we observe the early reshaping of the initial Gaussian packet into the X-pulse and its propagation, even for vanishingly small densities. This allows us to outline the crucial effects and parameters that drive the phenomena and to tune the degree of superluminal propagation, which we found to be in close agreement with numerical simulations.