Exciton-polaritons (polaritons herein) in transition-metal dichalcogenide monolayers have attracted significant attention due to their potential for polariton-based optoelectronics. Many of the proposed applications rely on the ability to trap polaritons and to reach macroscopic occupation of their ground energy state. Here, we engineer a trap for room-temperature polaritons in an all-dielectric optical microcavity by locally increasing the interactions between the WS2 excitons and cavity photons. The resulting confinement enhances the population and the first-order coherence of the polaritons in the ground state, with the latter effect related to dramatic suppression of disorder-induced inhomogeneous dephasing. We also demonstrate efficient population transfer into the trap when optically injecting free polaritons outside of its periphery.
@article{arxiv.2112.12383,
title = {Enhancing ground state population and macroscopic coherence of room-temperature WS$_2$ polaritons through engineered confinement},
author = {M. Wurdack and E. Estrecho and S. Todd and C. Schneider and A. G. Truscott and E. A. Ostrovskaya},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.12383},
year = {2022}
}