Abstract
Magnetic monopoles1 are point-like sources of magnetic field, never observed as fundamental particles. This has triggered the search for monopole analogues in the form of emergent particles in the solid state, with recent observations in spin-ice crystals2,3,4 and one-dimensional ferromagnetic nanowires5. Alternatively, topological excitations of spinor Bose–Einstein condensates have been predicted to demonstrate monopole textures6,7,8. Here we show the formation of monopole analogues in an exciton–polariton spinor condensate hitting a defect potential in a semiconductor microcavity. Oblique dark solitons are nucleated in the wake of the defect9,10 in the presence of an effective magnetic field acting on the polariton pseudo-spin11. The field splits the integer soliton into a pair of oblique half-solitons12 of opposite magnetic charge, subject to opposite effective magnetic forces. These mixed spin-phase excitations thus behave like one-dimensional monopoles13. Our results open the way to the generation of stable magnetic currents in photonic quantum fluids.
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Acknowledgements
We thank R. Houdré for the microcavity sample and P. Voisin for fruitful discussions. This work was supported by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (contract ANR-11-BS10-001), the RTRA (contract Boseflow1D), IFRAF, the FP7 ITNs Clermont4 (235114) and Spin-Optronics (237252), and the FP7 IRSES ‘Polaphen’ (246912). A.B. is a member of the Institut Universitaire de France.
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Hivet, R., Flayac, H., Solnyshkov, D. et al. Half-solitons in a polariton quantum fluid behave like magnetic monopoles. Nature Phys 8, 724–728 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2406
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2406
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