This Demonstration addresses the case of temporal variation. It shows the evolution in time of the polarization of light emitted by superimposing polariton fields, that is, from the light-matter interaction (Rabi coupling) in a semiconductor microcavity. It was recently proposed theoretically, and demonstrated experimentally [3], that such systems can afford a largely tunable spanning of the Poincaré sphere, depending on the parameters of two pulses exciting the system to create the state

at [4].

This Demonstration lets you tune these parameters as well as the system parameters (Rabi frequency , polariton lifetime ) and track the state of polarization in time. Without decay (), the polarization describes a green circle, whereas with decay (), the polarization drifts around the sphere to converge to an asymptotic value, pointed to by the red arrow; the blue line shows the polarization trajectory between these two points, which can be tracked in time with the purple arrow.