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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Excitonic oscillator-strength saturation dominates polariton-polariton interactions

Maxime Richard1,2,*, Irénée Frérot3, Sylvain Ravets4, Jacqueline Bloch4, Carlos Anton-Solanas5, Ferdinand Claude1,2, Yueguang Zhou1,2, Martina Morassi4, Aristide Lemaître4 et al.

Iacopo Carusotto6 and Anna Minguzzi7

  • *Contact author: maxime.richard@cnrs.fr
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, L012039 – Published 17 February, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/r8m8-hckx

Abstract

Exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities exhibit large two-body interactions that, thanks to ever-refined nanotechnology techniques, are getting closer and closer to the quantum regime where single-photon nonlinearities start being relevant. To foster additional progress in this direction, in this work we experimentally investigate the microscopic mechanism driving polariton-polariton interactions. We measure the dispersion relation of the collective excitations that are thermally generated on top of a coherent fluid of interacting lower polaritons. By comparing the measurements with the Bogoliubov theory over both the lower- and upper-polariton branches simultaneously, we find that polariton-polariton interactions stem dominantly from a mechanism of saturation of the exciton oscillator strength.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, L012039– Published 17 February, 2026
  • Received 14 January 2025
  • Accepted 30 January 2026
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