Beteiligte:
Mornhinweg, Joshua;
Diebel, Laura Katharina;
Halbhuber, Maike;
Prager, Michael;
Riepl, Josef;
Inzenhofer, Tobias;
Bougeard, Dominique;
Huber, Rupert;
Lange, Christoph
Erschienen:
Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2024
Erschienen in:
Nature Communications, 15 (2024) 1
Sprache:
Englisch
DOI:
10.1038/s41467-024-46038-9
ISSN:
2041-1723
Entstehung:
Anmerkungen:
Beschreibung:
AbstractDressing electronic quantum states with virtual photons creates exotic effects ranging from vacuum-field modified transport to polaritonic chemistry, and squeezing or entanglement of modes. The established paradigm of cavity quantum electrodynamics maximizes the light-matter coupling strength $${\varOmega }_{{{{{{\rm{R}}}}}}}/{\omega }_{{{{{{\rm{c}}}}}}}$$ Ω R / ω c , defined as the ratio of the vacuum Rabi frequency and the frequency of light, by resonant interactions. Yet, the finite oscillator strength of a single electronic excitation sets a natural limit to $${\varOmega }_{{{{{{\rm{R}}}}}}}/{\omega }_{{{{{{\rm{c}}}}}}}$$ Ω R / ω c . Here, we enter a regime of record-strong light-matter interaction which exploits the cooperative dipole moments of multiple, highly non-resonant magnetoplasmon modes tailored by our metasurface. This creates an ultrabroadband spectrum of 20 polaritons spanning 6 optical octaves, calculated vacuum ground state populations exceeding 1 virtual excitation quantum, and coupling strengths equivalent to $${\varOmega }_{{{{{{\rm{R}}}}}}}/{\omega }_{{{{{{\rm{c}}}}}}}=3.19$$ Ω R / ω c = 3.19 . The extreme interaction drives strongly subcycle energy exchange between multiple bosonic vacuum modes akin to high-order nonlinearities, and entangles previously orthogonal electronic excitations solely via vacuum fluctuations.