Abstract

Vortices carrying quantized topological charges have potential applications in information processing. In this work, we investigate vortex carriers and waveguides in microcavity polariton condensates, nonresonantly excited by a homogeneous pump with intensity grooves. An intensity groove with a ring shape in the pump gives rise to dark-ring states of the condensate with a π-phase jump, akin to dark solitons. The dark-ring states can be destroyed by a stronger density of the surrounding condensate and reduce into vortex–antivortex pairs. Multiple vortex-pair states are found to be stable in the same dark ring of the pump. When the pump ring is broader, higher-order dark states with multiple π-phase jumps can be obtained, and interestingly they can be used to construct vortex waveguides. If a single vortex is imprinted in such waveguides, it can travel in a particular direction, showing one-way transportation. In other words, an imprinted vortex with a certain charge in a specifically designed higher-order dark state is only allowed to propagate unidirectionally.

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