[5] At this stage, the electrically driven device operates at very low temperatures around 10 K and needs a magnetic field applied in the Faraday geometry.
A crucial element of the success by both teams lies in the hybrid nature of polaritons whose matter component (excitons) exhibits a sensitive response to an external magnetic field.
The investigations performed by the team in Würzburg, having started with the idea of engineering an electrical device in 2007, led to the desired effect after a few years in cooperation with their international partners from the U.S., Japan, Russia, Singapore, Iceland and Germany.
Finally, their studies were complemented by a crucial experiment in a magnetic field:[8] an unambiguous verification of the emission-mode's matter component in the polaritonic laser regime was given, yielding a first-time experimental demonstration of an electrically pumped polariton laser by C. Schneider, A. Rahimi-Iman and co-authors in the team of S. Höfling (published in Nature in May 2013).
[9] On June 5, 2014, Bhattacharya's team succeeded in creating what's believed to be the first polariton laser that is fueled by electric current as opposed to light, and also works at room temperature, rather than far below zero.