Bose Condensation of Upper-Branch Exciton-Polaritons in a Transferable Microcavity.

Exciton-polaritons are composite quasiparticles that result from the coupling of excitonic transitions and optical modes. They have been extensively studied because of their quantum phenomena and potential applications in unconventional coherent light sources and all-optical control elements. In this work, we report the observation of Bose-Einstein condensation of the upper polariton branch in a transferable WS2 monolayer microcavity. Near the condensation threshold, we observe a nonlinear increase in upper polariton intensity accompanied by a decrease in line width and an increase in temporal coherence, all of which are hallmarks of Bose-Einstein condensation. Simulations show that this condensation occurs within a specific particle density range, depending on the excitonic properties and pumping conditions. The manifestation of upper polariton condensation unlocks new possibilities for studying the condensate competition while linking it to practical realizations in polaritonic lasers. Our findings contribute to the understanding of bosonic systems and offer potential for the development of polaritonic devices.

Charged Bosons Made of Fermions in Bilayer Structures with Strong Metallic Screening.

Two-dimensional monolayer structures of transition metal dichalogenides (TMDs) have been shown to allow many higher-order excitonic bound states, including trions (charged excitons), biexcitons (excitonic molecules), and charged biexcitons. We report here experimental evidence and the theoretical basis for a new bound excitonic complex, consisting two free carriers bound to an exciton in a bilayer structure. Our experimental measurements on structures made using two different materials show a new spectral line at the predicted energy with two different TMD materials (MoSe2 and WSe2) with both n- and p-doping if and only if all the required theoretical conditions for this complex are fulfilled, in particular, only in the presence of a parallel metal layer that significantly screens the repulsive interaction between the like-charge carriers. Because these four-carrier bound states are charged bosons, they could eventually be the basis for a new path to superconductivity without Cooper pairing.

High Efficiency of Exciton-Polariton Lasing in a 2D Multilayer Structure.

We have placed a van der Waals homostructure, formed by stacking three two-dimensional layers of WS2 separated by insulating hBN, similar to a multiple-quantum well structure, inside a microcavity, which facilitates the formation of quasiparticles known as exciton-polaritons. The polaritons are a combination of light and matter, allowing laser emission to be enhanced by nonlinear scattering, as seen in prior polariton lasers. In the experiments reported here, we have observed laser emission with an ultralow threshold. The threshold was approximately 59 nW/µm2, with a lasing efficiency of 3.82%. These findings suggest a potential for efficient laser operations using such homostructures.