Mechanistic principles of exciton-polariton relaxation

Exciton-polaritons are light-matter hybrid quasi-particles that have emerged as a flexible platform for developing quantum technologies and engineering material properties. However, the fundamental mechanistic principles that govern their dynamics and relaxation remain elusive. In this work, we provide the microscopic mechanistic understanding of the exciton-polariton relaxation process that follows from an excitation in the upper polariton. Using both mixed quantum-classical simulations and analytical analysis, we reveal that phonon-induced upper-to-lower polariton relaxation proceeds via two steps: the first step is a vertical inter-band transition from the upper to the lower polariton, which is followed by a second step that is a phonon-induced Fröhlich scattering within the lower polariton. We find that in materials of finite thickness (which include filled cavities), phonon-induced polaritonic intraband Fröhlich scattering is significantly suppressed. We show that the microscopic origin of this suppression is phonon-fluctuations synchronization (or self-averaging) due to the polaritonic spatial delocalization in the quantization direction. Finally, we show that the same phonon fluctuation-synchronization effect plays a central role across polaritonic relaxation pathways, and we derive simple analytical expressions that relate a material's finite thickness to the corresponding relaxation rate constants.