Realizing Persistent-Spin-Helix Lasing in the Regime of Rashba-Dresselhaus Spin-Orbit Coupling in a Dye-Filled Liquid-Crystal Optical Microcavity

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Realizing Persistent-Spin-Helix Lasing in the Regime of Rashba-Dresselhaus Spin-Orbit Coupling in a Dye-Filled Liquid-Crystal Optical Microcavity

Marcin Muszyński, Mateusz Król, Katarzyna Rechcińska, Przemysław Oliwa, Mateusz Kędziora, Karolina Łempicka-Mirek, Rafał Mazur, Przemysław Morawiak, Wiktor Piecek, Przemysław Kula, Pavlos G. Lagoudakis, Barbara Piętka, and Jacek Szczytko

Phys. Rev. Applied 17, 014041 – Published 28 January 2022

Abstract

In the presence of Rashba-Dresselhaus coupling, strong spin-orbit interactions in liquid-crystal optical cavities result in a distinctive spin-split entangled dispersion. Spin coherence between such modes gives rise to an optically persistent spin helix. In this paper, we introduce optical gain in such a system, by dispersing a molecular dye in a liquid-crystal microcavity, and demonstrate an optically persistent spin-helix lasing in the Rashba-Dresselhaus regime.

Received 29 September 2021
Revised 15 December 2021
Accepted 20 December 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.17.014041

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Dye lasers Liquid crystal lasers Microcavity & microdisk lasers Rashba coupling Tunable lasers

Nonlinear Dynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Marcin Muszyński ¹, Mateusz Król ¹, Katarzyna Rechcińska ¹, Przemysław Oliwa¹, Mateusz Kędziora ¹, Karolina Łempicka-Mirek¹, Rafał Mazur ², Przemysław Morawiak ², Wiktor Piecek ², Przemysław Kula ³, Pavlos G. Lagoudakis ^4,5, Barbara Piętka ¹, and Jacek Szczytko ^1,*

¹Institute of Experimental Physics, Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland
²Institute of Applied Physics, Military University of Technology, 00–908 Warsaw, Poland
³Institute of Chemistry, Military University of Technology, 00–908 Warsaw, Poland
⁴Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Bolshoy Boulevard 30, Bld. 1, Moscow 121205, Russia
⁵Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom

^*Jacek.Szczytko@fuw.edu.pl

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Vol. 17, Iss. 1 — January 2022

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Images

Figure 1
(a) The scheme of the optical microcavity filled with liquid crystal and P580 dye (dye-doped LCMC). Upon pulsed excitation, lasing action occurs at the lowest energy $E$ of the cavity-modes dispersion relation, which depends on the amplitude of the ac voltage applied to the structure. (b) For initial orientation of the LC, the effective refractive index for vertically (V) [horizontally (H)] polarized light is equal to the ordinary $n_{o}$ (extraordinary $n_{e}$ ) refractive index. (c) With a voltage applied to the ITO electrodes, the LC molecules rotate within the $x$ - $z$ plane, which decreases the effective refractive index $n_{eff}$ for horizontally polarized light. (d)–(g) The energies of the cavity modes with increasing electric bias. When two modes of different parity are close to degenerate (e)–(g), they are coupled with the Rashba-Dresselhaus term, resulting in circular polarization of the bands marked as red for $σ^{+}$ and blue for $σ^{-}$ .
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Figure 2
Lasing in dye-doped LCMC. The experimental emission spectra (a) below and (b),(c) above the lasing threshold. The purple and green dashed lines correspond to the Rashba-Dresselhaus Hamiltonian (1). (d) Normalized emission spectra obtained for an angle close to $0^{\circ}$ for different pulse energies. (e) The emission intensity (red dots), line width (blue squares), and peak position (green diamonds) as a function of the energy of the excitation pulse. The black lines are the linear fits to the intensity parameters below (first five points) and above (last four points) the lasing threshold.
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Figure 3
The tunable laser wavelength. (a)–(c) The normalized experimental emission spectra measured for three different applied voltages above the lasing threshold. (d) The position of the main emission peak versus the applied voltage. The first series (orange dots) and the second series (purple diamonds) are measured for pulse-energy densities of $2.34 J / {cm}^{2}$ and $3.21 J / {cm}^{2}$ , respectively.
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Figure 4
Lasing in Rashba-Dresselhaus resonance. (a) The dispersion relation in both directions of the incidence angles. (b) Angle-resolved emission spectra. (c) The difference between the emission intensities in $σ^{+}$ (red) and $σ^{-}$ (blue) polarization. (d),(e) The momentum-space imaging for (d) the total emission intensity and (e) the degree of circular polarization (the $S_{3}$ parameter).
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Figure 5
The persistent spin-helix laser: the Stokes parameters (a) $S_{1}$ , (b) $S_{2}$ , and (c) $S_{3}$ for real-space imaging. The histograms in the insets at the top correspond to the positive and negative values along the $y$ direction.
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