In physics, polaritons are quasiparticles resulting from strong coupling of electromagnetic waves with an electric or magnetic dipole-carrying excitation. They are an expression of the common quantum phenomenon known as level repulsion, also known as the anti-crossing principle. Polaritons describe the crossing of the dispersion of light with any interacting resonance. Since antiquity, people have tried to understand the behavior of matter: why unsupported objects drop to the ground, why different materials have different properties, and so forth. ... In physics, a quasiparticle refers to a particle-like entity arising in certain systems of interacting particles. ... Electromagnetic radiation is a propagating wave in space with electric and magnetic components. ... The Earths magnetic field, which is approximately a dipole. ... The word quantum, pl. ... In optics, dispersion is a phenomenon that causes the separation of a wave into spectral components with different frequencies, due to a dependence of the waves speed on its frequency. ... In physics, resonance is the tendency of a system to absorb more energy when the frequency of the oscillations matches the systems natural frequency of vibration (its resonant frequency) than it does at other frequencies. ...

Thus, a polariton is the result of the mixing of a photon with an excitation of a material. The most discussed types of polaritons are phonon-polaritons, resulting from coupling of an infrared photon with a phonon; exciton-polaritons, resulting from coupling of visible light with an exciton; and surface plasmon-polaritons, resulting from coupling of surface plasmons with light (the wavelength depends on the substance). In physics, the photon (from Greek φως phos, meaning light) is the quantum of the electromagnetic field, for instance light. ... Image of a small dog taken in mid-infrared (thermal) light (false color) Infrared (IR) radiation is electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength longer than that of visible light, but shorter than that of microwave radiation. ... The phonon is the acoustic analogy to the photon. ... The optical spectrum (light or visible spectrum) is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the human eye. ... An exciton is a bound state of an electron and an imaginary particle called an electron hole in an insulator (or semiconductor), or in other words, a Coulomb correlated electron-hole pair. ... In physics, the plasmon is the particle resulting from the quantization of plasma oscillations, which are density waves of the charge carriers in a conducting medium such as a metal, semiconductor, or plasma. ...

Whenever the polariton picture is valid, the model of photons in crystals is insufficient. A major feature of polaritons is a strong dependency of the propagation speed of light through the crystal on the frequency. For exciton-polaritons, rich experimental results on various aspects have been gained in copper (I) oxide. Sine waves of various frequencies; the lower waves have higher frequencies than those above. ... Copper(I) oxide or cuprous oxide (Cu2O) is an oxide of copper. ...

References

• U. Fano: Atomic Theory of Electromagnetic Interactions in Dense Materials, Phys. Rev. 103, 1202 (1956) DOI:10.1103/PhysRev.103.1202

• J.J. Hopfield: Theory of the Contribution of Excitons to the Complex Dielectric Constant of Crystals, Phys. Rev. 112, 1555 (1958) DOI:10.1103/PhysRev.112.1555

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See also

Polaritonics This article is in need of attention. ...