Engineering spatial coherence in lattices of polariton condensates

Artificial lattices of coherently coupled macroscopic states are at the heart of applications ranging from solving hard combinatorial optimization problems to simulating complex many-body physical systems. The size and complexity of the problems scale with the extent of coherence across the lattice. Although the fundamental limit of spatial coherence depends on the nature of the couplings and lattice parameters, it is usually engineering constraints that define the size of the system. Here, we engineer polariton condensate lattices with active control on the spatial arrangement and condensate density that results in near-diffraction limited emission, and spatial coherence that exceeds by nearly two orders of magnitude the size of each individual condensate. We use these advancements to unravel the dependence of spatial correlations between polariton condensates on the lattice geometry. Published by The Optical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Automated summary

Artificial lattices of coherently coupled macroscopic states play a key role in solving complex optimization problems and simulating physical systems. By engineering polariton condensate lattices with active control, researchers have achieved emission close to diffraction limits and significantly improved spatial coherence. This advancement has allowed for a better understanding of the dependence of spatial correlations between polariton condensates on lattice geometry.