title: Coupling quantum tunneling with cavity photons.
abstract: Tunneling of electrons through a potential barrier is fundamental to chemical reactions, electronic transport in semiconductors and superconductors, magnetism, and devices such as terahertz oscillators. Whereas tunneling is typically controlled by electric fields, a completely different approach is to bind electrons into bosonic quasiparticles with a photonic component. Quasiparticles made of such light-matter microcavity polaritons have recently been demonstrated to Bose-condense into superfluids, whereas spatially separated Coulomb-bound electrons and holes possess strong dipole interactions. We use tunneling polaritons to connect these two realms, producing bosonic quasiparticles with static dipole moments. Our resulting three-state system yields dark polaritons analogous to those in atomic systems or optical waveguides, thereby offering new possibilities for electromagnetically induced transparency, room-temperature condensation, and adiabatic photon-to-electron transfer.
authors.affiliation: NanoPhotonics Centre, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0HE, UK.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cristofolini
authors.forename: Gabriel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Christmann
authors.forename: Simeon I
authors.initials: SI
authors.lastname: Tsintzos
authors.forename: George
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Deligeorgis
authors.forename: George
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Konstantinidis
authors.forename: Zacharias
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Hatzopoulos
authors.forename: Pavlos G
authors.initials: PG
authors.lastname: Savvidis
authors.forename: Jeremy J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Baumberg