In-situ tunneling control in photonic potentials by Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling
Optics
2026-03-24 v2 Soft Condensed Matter
Abstract
The tunability of individual coupling amplitudes in photonic lattices is highly desirable for photonic Hamiltonian engineering and for studying topological transitions in situ. In this work, we demonstrate the tunneling control between individual lattice sites patterned inside an optical microcavity. The tuning is achieved by applying a voltage to a liquid crystal microcavity possessing photonic Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling. This type of spin-orbit coupling emerges due to the high birefringence of the liquid crystal material and constitutes an artificial gauge field for photons. The proposed technique can be combined with strong-light matter coupling and non-Hermitian physics already established in liquid crystal microcavities.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2408.08582,
title = {In-situ tunneling control in photonic potentials by Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling},
author = {Rafał Mirek and Pavel Kokhanchik and Darius Urbonas and Ioannis Georgakilas and Marcin Muszyński and Piotr Kapuściński and Przemysław Oliwa and Barbara Piętka and Jacek Szczytko and Michael Forster and Ullrich Scherf and Przemysław Morawiak and Wiktor Piecek and Przemysław Kula and Dmitry Solnyshkov and Guillaume Malpuech and Rainer Mahrt and Thilo Stöferle},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.08582},
year = {2026}
}