Confinement of Polariton Condensates in quasi-Flatband BICs in Plasmonic and Dielectric Metasurfaces

We investigate exciton-polariton condensation in square arrays, composed of either dielectric silicon (Si) or plasmonic silver (Ag) nanodisks, covered with a dye-doped layer. Both arrays support symmetry-protected bound states in the continuum (BICs) at normal incidence, featuring electric quadrupolar ($( Q_{xy} $)) and magnetic dipolar ($( m_z $)) characters. Due to differences in mode coupling, these BICs are split by $(\sim 10$) meV in the Si array, whereas they remain nearly degenerate in the Ag array. Simulations reveal that interference in the Ag array results in hybrid modes, $((m_z + i\tilde{Q}_{xy})$) and $((m_z - i\tilde{Q}_{xy})$), which are polarized along orthogonal directions. Interestingly, this results in similar lasing thresholds in both Si and Ag arrays, regardless of the inherent non-radiative losses of Ag, and also a confinement of the polariton condensates in the Ag array. While condensation in the Si array occurs in the $( Q_{xy} $) BIC, producing a characteristic donut-shaped far-field emission in k-space, condensation in the Ag array populates the hybrid modes, leading to a double-cross emission pattern extending over a broad range of wave vectors due to the quasi-flatband nature of this mode. As a result, the Ag array also exhibits a strong confinement along the polarization axis in real space. However, for unpolarized emission, there is a similar spatial confinement in both Si and Ag arrays. This control over the confinement of condensates could also be exploited to control interactions. Our results highlight a novel mechanism for condensate confinement with potential applications in quantum computing and polaritonic circuitry.