No Arabic abstract
We present the theoretical prediction of spontaneous rotating vortex rings in a parametrically driven quantum fluid of polaritons -- coherent superpositions of coupled quantum well excitons and microcavity photons. These rings arise not only in the absence of any rotating drive, but also in the absence of a trapping potential, in a model known to map quantitatively to experiments. We begin by proposing a novel parametric pumping scheme for polaritons, with circular symmetry and radial currents, and characterize the resulting nonequilibrium condensate. We show that the system is unstable to spontaneous breaking of circular symmetry via a modulational instability, following which a vortex ring with large net angular momentum emerges, rotating in one of two topologically distinct states. Such rings are robust and carry distinctive experimental signatures, and so they could find applications in the new generation of polaritonic devices.
We consider a polariton microcavity resonantly driven by two external lasers which simultaneously pump both lower and upper polariton branches at normal incidence. In this setup, we study the occurrence of instabilities of the pump-only solutions towards the spontaneous formation of patterns. Their appearance is a consequence of the spontaneous symmetry breaking of translational and rotational invariance due to interaction induced parametric scattering. We observe the evolution between diverse patterns which can be classified as single-pump, where parametric scattering occurs at the same energy as one of the pumps, and as two-pump, where scattering occurs at a different energy. For two-pump instabilities, stripe and chequerboard patterns become the dominant steady-state solutions because cubic parametric scattering processes are forbidden. This contrasts with the single-pump case, where hexagonal patterns are the most common arrangements. We study the possibility of controlling the evolution between different patterns. Our results are obtained within a linear stability analysis and are confirmed by finite size full numerical calculations.
If a quantum fluid is driven with enough angular momentum, at equilibrium the ground state of the system is given by a lattice of quantised vortices whose density is prescribed by the quantization of circulation. We report on the first experimental study of the Feynman-Onsager relation in a non-equilibrium polariton fluid, free to expand and rotate. Upon initially imprinting a lattice of vortices in the quantum fluid, we track the vortex core positions on picosecond time scales. We observe an accelerated stretching of the lattice and an outward bending of the linear trajectories of the vortices, due to the repulsive polariton interactions. Access to the full density and phase fields allows us to detect a small deviation from the Feynman-Onsager rule in terms of a transverse velocity component, due to the density gradient of the fluid envelope acting on the vortex lattice.
Polariton condensates have proved to be model systems to investigate topological defects, as they allow for direct and non-destructive imaging of the condensate complex order parameter. The fundamental topological excitations of such systems are quantized vortices. In specific configurations, further ordering can bring the formation of vortex lattices. In this work we demonstrate the spontaneous formation of ordered vortical states, consisting in geometrically self-arranged vortex-antivortex pairs. A mean-field generalized Gross-Pitaevskii model reproduces and supports the physics of the observed phenomenology.
Exciton-polaritons in semiconductor microcavities constitute the archetypal realization of a quantum fluid of light. Under coherent optical drive, remarkable effects such as superfluidity, dark solitons or the nucleation of hydrodynamic vortices have been observed. These phenomena can be all understood as a specific manifestation of collective excitations forming on top of the polariton condensate. In this work, we performed a Brillouin scattering experiment to measure their dispersion relation $omega(mathbf{k})$ directly. The result, such as a speed of sound which is apparently twice too low, cannot be explained upon considering the polariton condensate alone. In a combined theoretical and experimental analysis, we demonstrate that the presence of a reservoir of long-lived excitons interacting with polaritons has a dramatic influence on the nature and characteristic of the quantum fluid, and that it explains our measurement quantitatively. This work clarifies the role of such a reservoir in the different polariton hydrodynamics phenomena occurring under resonant optical drive. It also provides an unambiguous tool to determine the condensate-to-reservoir fraction in the quantum fluid, and sets an accurate framework to approach novel ideas for polariton-based quantum-optical applications.
We present a simple Hamiltonian description of the dynamics of a quantized vortex ring in a trapped superfluid, compare this description with dynamical simulations, and characterize the dependence of the dynamics of the shape of the trap.