Strong coupling in fully tunable microcavities filled with biologically-produced fluorescent proteins

We thank C. Schneider for fruitful discussions and A. Clemens and K. Ostermann (TU Dresden, Germany) for technical support with protein preparation. We acknowledge financial support from the European Research Council (ERC StG ABLASE, 640012), the Scottish Funding Council (via SUPA), the European Union Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (PCIG12-GA-2012-334407) and the EPSRC Hybrid Polaritonics program grant (EP/M025330/1). M.S. acknowledges funding from the German Science Foundation (DFG) through a Research Fellowship (SCHU 3003/1-1) and from the European Commission for a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (659213). S.H. gratefully acknowledges support by the Royal Society and the Wolfson Foundation.Strong coupling between cavity photons and excited states of biologically produced recombinant fluorescent proteins in fully tunable optical microcavities is demonstrated. Natural thickness and concentration gradients in blends of two different proteins allow precise adjustment of the spectral position of polariton states and of the effective coupling strength, thus providing control of the photonic and excitonic components of the system.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe