Optical trapping and tailoring of exciton-polariton condensates into macroscopic complexes

Subwavelength photonic gratings can host long-lived, negative-effective-mass photonic modes that couple strongly to electron transitions in constituent active materials. The resulting bosonic hybrid light-matter modes, or exciton-polaritons, can be optically configured to accumulate into various macroscopic artificial complexes and lattices of coherent quantum fluids.