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Coherent optical spin Hall transport for polaritonics at room temperature

Nature Materials volume 24, pages 56–62 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Spin or valley degrees of freedom hold promise for next-generation spintronics. Nonetheless, the macroscopic coherent spin current formations are still hindered by rapid dephasing due to electron scattering, specifically at room temperature. Exciton polaritons offer excellent platforms for spin-optronic devices via the optical spin Hall effect. However, this effect could neither be unequivocally observed at room temperature nor be exploited for practical spintronic devices due to the presence of strong thermal fluctuations or large linear spin splitting. Here we report the observation of room-temperature optical spin Hall effect of exciton polaritons, with the spin current flow over 60 μm in a formamidinium lead bromide perovskite microcavity. We provide direct evidence of long-range coherence in the flow of polaritons and the spin current carried by them. Leveraging the spin Hall transport of polaritons, we further demonstrate two polaritonic devices, namely, a NOT gate and a spin-polarized beamsplitter, advancing the frontier of room-temperature polaritonics in perovskite microcavities.

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Fig. 1: Schematic and mechanism of OSHE and polaritonic devices using FAPbBr3 perovskite microcavity.
Fig. 2: Observation of OSHE in momentum space.
Fig. 3: Exciton-polariton spin currents in real space and comparison with theory.
Fig. 4: Characterization of exciton-polariton long-range coherence.
Fig. 5: Realizing polariton spintronic devices by harnessing optical spin Hall transport.

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Data availability

All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in this paper are available in the Article or its Supplementary Information. Data supporting the findings in this Article are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The codes used in this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

Q.X. gratefully acknowledges funding support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 12020101003 and 92250301) and strong support from the State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics at Tsinghua University. S.G. gratefully acknowledges funding support from the Excellent Young Scientists Fund Program (Overseas) of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 12274034) and a start-up grant from the Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences. Y.S. thanks Dr. Quanbin Guo for his help during the optical experiments.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Ying Shi, Yusong Gan.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics and Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Ying Shi, Yusong Gan, Yubin Wang & Qihua Xiong

  2. Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Yuzhong Chen, Sanjib Ghosh & Qihua Xiong

  3. School of Science, Westlake University and Institute of Natural Sciences, Westlake Institute for Advanced Study, Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Alexey Kavokin

  4. Moscow Center for Advanced Studies, Moscow, Russia

    Alexey Kavokin

  5. Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Qihua Xiong

  6. Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Qihua Xiong

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  1. Ying Shi
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Contributions

Q.X. and S.G. conceived the idea. Y.S. prepared the samples and conducted all the optical spectroscopy measurements. Y.G. performed the theoretical calculations. Y.C. and Y.W. provided help on the measurements. Y.S. wrote the manuscript with input from Y.G., S.G. and Q.X. A.K. provided input in theoretical understanding. All authors participated in analysing the results and preparing the manuscript and agreed with the conclusion. Q.X. and S.G. supervised the whole project.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Sanjib Ghosh, Alexey Kavokin or Qihua Xiong.

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Shi, Y., Gan, Y., Chen, Y. et al. Coherent optical spin Hall transport for polaritonics at room temperature. Nat. Mater. 24, 56–62 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-024-02028-2

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