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arXiv:2606.31721

Boosted Optomechanics with a Fluid of Nonlinear Polaritons

Florent Malabat, Martin Colombano, Titouan Lévêque, Martina Morassi, Aristide Lemaître, Alexandre Le Boité, Ivan Favero

quant-phSubmitted Jun 30, 2026• Announced Jul 1, 2026
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Merging optomechanics and polaritonics opens stimulating perspectives like the giant enhancement of optomechanical interaction and the enrichment of optomechanics with effective nonlinear photons. The experimental implementation of these concepts has however remained elusive. Here we report on the resonant optical control of polaritonic optomechanical resonators constituted of semiconductor disks embedding quantum wells. Whispering gallery photons and quantum well excitons strongly couple, leading to the emergence of polaritons that couple to the mechanical vibrations of the disk. We perform resonant optomechanical frequency response experiments on these resonators, modeled introducing a minimal set of constitutive equations, from which we extract the polariton-modified optomechanical coupling $g_0$ and the polariton nonlinearities. We observe a boost of $g_0$ by more than a decade compared to bare photons, reaching to a record $g_0$ for whispering gallery resonators of $22$ MHz, and analyze experimentally and theoretically its evolution as function of the polariton's composition. We also measure a clear hierarchy of three polaritonic nonlinearities, again analyzed as function of polariton composition, establishing a bridge between past unconciliated reports in polaritonics. Grounded on experimental and theoretical foundations, resonant polaritonic optomechanics is set ready for an optomechanical exploration of quantum fluids of polaritons.

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Although they have enabled several advances in the field of optomechanics, optomechanical disk resonators have not yet been operated in the quantum regime. We present the first experimental demonstration of an optomechanical disk resonator prepared in the quantum ground state. With a gigahertz frequency, the mechanical breathing mode of the investigated semiconductor disk reaches a level of excitation below a single phonon when cooled in a dilution refrigerator. We quantify the phonon occupancy of the mechanical mode by performing Brillouin sideband spectroscopy: a conical optical fiber is evanescently coupled to the disk optical whispering-gallery mode, and Stokes and anti-Stokes photons scattered by phonon emission and absorption are counted on a single-photon detector. We measure a suppression of the absorption process corresponding to a phonon occupancy of 0.66±0.200.66\pm0.200.66±0.20. We experimentally investigate the mechanisms ruling laser-induced heating, which limits the lowest measurable phonon occupancy, and notably witness an extra-cavity heating effect.
The hybridization of light and matter excitations in the form of polaritons has enabled major advances in understanding and controlling optical nonlinearities. Entering the quantum regime of strong interactions between individual photons has, however, remained challenging since the strength of achievable polariton interactions is typically limited by the available interactions in the material. Here, we investigate collisions between dark-state polaritons in three-level systems and discover a resonant process that yields effective interactions, which are much larger than the underlying interaction between their matter constituents. We systematically investigate the underlying mechanism and demonstrate a substantial enhancement of polariton interactions by several orders of magnitude. This suggests a promising approach to quantum nonlinear optics in a range of physical settings, from atomic gases to excitons in semiconductors and two-dimensional bilayer materials.
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Nonlinearity is a key resource in both classical and quantum signal processing. Nonlinear nanomechanical elements have found applications ranging from sensing to computing, while networks of nonlinear resonators, as well as nonlinearly coupled networks of linear resonators, constitute promising platforms for simulating complex dynamics. Here, we experimentally demonstrate an approach to realizing strong mechanical nonlinearity in nanomechanical resonators, fully controlled through optical laser drives. The mechanism exploits the nonlinearity of the radiation-pressure interaction in a cavity optomechanical system, which gives rise to a nonlinear optical spring effect. The resulting Duffing nonlinearity is conveniently tunable in strength via pump laser power, while its sign is controlled by laser detuning. Moreover, we demonstrate that the nonlinear optical spring mediates effective interactions between mechanical modes coupled to a common cavity, inducing tunable nonlinear interactions between them that impact spectral response and dynamics. These results establish cavity optomechanics as a versatile and in-situ reconfigurable platform for engineering nonlinear dynamics in resonators and networks.
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We provide a systemic theory to entangle excitons with microcavity photons. This is realized by adopting an exciton-optomechanics system and introducing a nonlinear dispersive interaction with a mechanical oscillator. We show that when either the exciton and cavity modes in the weak-coupling regime, or the two exciton-polariton modes in the strong-coupling regime are, respectively, resonant with the optomechanical Stokes and anti-Stokes sidebands, entanglement between excitons and cavity photons, or between two exciton polaritons, can be established. The entanglement is in the steady state and can potentially be achievable at room temperature. In both cases, genuine tripartite entanglement is shown to be present. Published by the American Physical Society 2024