Mimicking graphene with polaritonic spin vortices

Exploring the properties of strongly correlated systems through quantum simulation with photons, cold atoms or polaritons represents an active area of research. In fact, the latter permits to shed the light on the behavior of complex systems which are hardly to be addressed in the laboratory or tackled numerically. In this study we discuss an analogue of graphene formed by exciton-polariton spin vortices arranged into a hexagonal lattice. We show how the graphene-type dispersion at different energy scales arises for several types of exciton-polariton spin vortices. In contrast to previous studies of exciton-polaritons in artificial lattices, the use of exciton-polariton spin vortex modes offers a more rich playground for quantum simulations. In particular, we demonstrate that the sign of the nearest neighbor coupling strength can be inverted.