Condensed Matter Seminar: Cavity-enhanced transport of excitons: From enhanced diffusion to ballistic motion approaching the speed of light

Strong light-matter coupling is one of the pillars of cavity quantum electrodynamics, where photons and materials excitations hybridize to form composite excitations known as cavity polaritons. While for many years research on strong coupling has been focused on its implications to optics, here I will discuss its impact on the properties of material and its potential as a novel tool for materials science.

In my talk I will primarily focus on our recent studies of "cavity-enhanced transport" - The hybridization with light gives rise to long-range transport of excitons over length-scales much longer than their typical diffusion length. Using ultrafast microscopy we directly showed, for the first time, how this mechanism leads to six orders of magnitude enhancement in the diffusion coefficient and even, at the extreme case, to ballistic motion over ~100 microns and at 2/3 the speed of light.