Exciton-polaritons in microcavities: Recent discoveries and perspectives

The exciton-polaritons in microcavities is a unique bosonic system which demonstrates remarkable quantum coherent phenomena at very high temperatures. The Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) and superfluidity, polariton lasing, parametric scattering and amplification, polariton spin switching, optical spin Hall effect (OSHE), quantised vortices are among the fascinating phenomena discovered in microcavities in the XXIst century. This paper is a short review of these and other recent discoveries in the exciton-polariton physics. It also contains an attempt to predict the next steps in the development of this field and addresses several effects, which have been theoretically predicted but not yet experimentally observed. This includes the 'polariton neurons', the 'spin Meissner effect' and the exciton-polariton mediated superconductivity. (C) 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim