Single-shot condensation of exciton polaritons and the hole burning effect

E. Estrecho, T. Gao, N. Bobrovska, M. D. Fraser, M. Steger, L. Pfeiffer, K. West, T. C. H. Liew, M. Matuszewski, D. W. Snoke, A. G. Truscott and E. A. Ostrovskaya ()
Additional contact information
E. Estrecho: The Australian National University
T. Gao: The Australian National University
N. Bobrovska: Polish Academy of Sciences
M. D. Fraser: JST, PRESTO
M. Steger: University of Pittsburgh
L. Pfeiffer: Princeton University
K. West: Princeton University
T. C. H. Liew: Nanyang Technological University
M. Matuszewski: Polish Academy of Sciences
D. W. Snoke: University of Pittsburgh
A. G. Truscott: The Australian National University
E. A. Ostrovskaya: The Australian National University

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract A bosonic condensate of exciton polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity is a macroscopic quantum state subject to pumping and decay. The fundamental nature of this driven-dissipative condensate is still under debate. Here, we gain an insight into spontaneous condensation by imaging long-lifetime exciton polaritons in a high-quality inorganic microcavity in a single-shot optical excitation regime, without averaging over multiple condensate realisations. We demonstrate that condensation is strongly influenced by an incoherent reservoir and that the reservoir depletion, the so-called spatial hole burning, is critical for the transition to the ground state. Condensates of photon-like polaritons exhibit strong shot-to-shot fluctuations and density filamentation due to the effective self-focusing associated with the reservoir depletion. In contrast, condensates of exciton-like polaritons display smoother spatial density distributions and are second-order coherent. Our observations show that the single-shot measurements offer a unique opportunity to study fundamental properties of non-equilibrium condensation in the presence of a reservoir.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05349-4 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-05349-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-05349-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().