# International Workshop on: Simulating gravitation and cosmology in condensed matter and optical systems

Jul 22 – 25, 2019
ECT* - Villa Tambosi
Europe/Rome timezone
Abstracts submission open. Posters do not require abstract submission.

## Towards exotic gravitational analogue in quantum fluids of light

Jul 23, 2019, 12:30 PM
15m
Meeting room (ECT* - Villa Tambosi)

### Meeting room

#### ECT* - Villa Tambosi

Strada delle Tabarelle, 286 38123 - Villazzano (TN) Italy

### Speaker

Dr Maxime Richard (CNRS - Institut Néel)

### Description

Exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities can be understood essentially as interacting photons that are confined into a bidimensional degree of freedom. Collectively, polaritons behave as a quantum fluid, with its typical features such as a superfluid state with sonic excitations. As such, and considering their photonic character, polaritons offer an exciting platform to simulate the physics of gravitational structures, such as black holes.

In this context, the main peculiarity of polariton fluids, i.e. their its driven-dissipative character, offers original physical situations and resources that are not readily available in equilibrium system. I will illustrate this idea with a few recent experimental investigations. I will show for instance that a polaritonic black hole, featuring a maximal surface gravity, can be engineered by exploiting their hysteretic dynamics. I will also present preliminary results towards the realization of a quantum fluid of polaritons in the analogue of the relativistic regime, i.e. in which the free particle effective mass $m_{\rm eff}c^2$ in the condensate is comparable or smaller than the interaction energy $gn$.

### Primary author

Dr Maxime Richard (CNRS - Institut Néel)