Polaritronics: Energy and electron transport through polaritonic states

Abstract

Polaritronics is a new branch of research that involves the study of polaritonic states and their applications in optoelectronic devices. Polaritonic states are distinguished by the inheritance of light and matter properties together. The cavity quantum electrodynamics picture of a two-level system interacting with a photon can define these states. Here, polaritonic devices perform classical operations through the collective interactions of an Avogadro number of molecules. By doing so, the newly formed states inherit a low effective mass and, therefore, behave similar to lightweight carriers of charge. At the same time, it possesses a collective coherence length as large as the mode volume of the cavity. This allows us to engineer hybrid devices that are specific in functions with quantization in both energy and momentum. This perspective gives glimpses of our views on polaritronics and its applications in quantum sensing and communication. We also pitch into understanding the limitations of such techniques along with the future outlook to obtain outperforming devices for real-world applications.