We study exciton-polariton nonlinear optical fluids in a high momentum regime for the first time. Defects in the fluid develop into dark solitons whose healing length decreases with increasing density. We deduce interaction constants for continuous wave polaritons an order of magnitude larger than with picosecond pulses. Time dependent measurements show a 100ps time for the buildup of the interaction strength suggesting a self-generated excitonic reservoir as the source of the extra nonlinearity. The experimental results agree well with a model of coupled photons, excitons and the reservoir.
We consider two concentric rings formed by bosonic condensates of exciton-polaritons. A circular superfluid flow of polaritons in one of the rings can be manipulated by acting upon the second annular polariton condensate. The complex coupling between the rings with different topological charges triggers nucleation of stable Josephson vortices (JVs) which are revealed as topological defects of the angular dependence of the relative phase between rings. Being dependent on the coupling strength, the structure of the JV governs the difference of the mean angular momenta of the inner and the outer rings. At the vanishing coupling the condensates rotate independently demonstrating no correlations of their winding numbers. At the moderate coupling, the interaction between two condensates tends to equalize their mean angular momenta despite of the mismatch of the winding numbers demonstrating the phenomenology of a drag effect. Above the critical coupling strength the synchronous rotation is established via the phase slip events.
The generation of squeezed light in semiconductor materials opens opportunities for building on-chip devices that are operated at the quantum level. Here we study theoretically a squeezed light source of polariton dark solitons confined in a geometric potential well of semiconductor microcavities in the strong coupling regime. We show that polariton dark solitons of odd and even parities can be created by tuning the potential depth. When driving the potential depth linearly, a bistability of solitons with the two different parities can be induced. Strong intensity squeezing is obtained near the turning point of the bistability due to the large nonlinear interaction, which can be controlled by Feshbach resonance. The phase diagram of the bistability and squeezing of the dark solitons is obtained through large scale numerical calculations. Our study contributes to the current efforts in realizing topological excitations and squeezed light sources with solid-state devices.
A quantum fluid passing an obstacle behaves differently from a classical one. When the flow is slow enough, the quantum gas enters a superfluid regime and neither whirlpools nor waves form around the obstacle. For higher flow velocities, it has been predicted that the perturbation induced by the defect gives rise to the turbulent emission of quantised vortices and to the nucleation of solitons. Using an interacting Bose gas of exciton-polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity, we report the transition from superfluidity to the hydrodynamic formation of oblique dark solitons and vortex streets in the wake of a potential barrier. The direct observation of these topological excitations provides key information on the mechanisms of superflow and shows the potential of polariton condensates for quantum turbulence studies.
Exciton-polaritons in a microcavity are composite two-dimensional bosonic quasiparticles, arising from the strong coupling between confined light modes in a resonant planar optical cavity and excitonic transitions, typically using excitons in semiconductor quantum wells (QWs) placed at the antinodes of the same cavity. Quantum phenomena such as Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC), quantized vortices, and macroscopic quantum states have been reported at temperatures from tens of Kelvin up to room temperatures, and polaritonic devices such as spin switches cite{Amo2010} and optical transistors have also been reported. Many of these effects of exciton-polaritons depend crucially on the polariton-polariton interaction strength. Despite the importance of this parameter, it has been difficult to make an accurate experimental measurement, mostly because of the difficulty of determining the absolute densities of polaritons and bare excitons. Here we report the direct measurement of the polariton-polariton interaction strength in a very high-Q microcavity structure. By allowing polaritons to propagate over 40 $mu$m to the center of a laser-generated annular trap, we are able to separate the polariton-polariton interactions from polariton-exciton interactions. The interaction strength is deduced from the energy renormalization of the polariton dispersion as the polariton density is increased, using the polariton condensation as a benchmark for the density. We find that the interaction strength is about two orders of magnitude larger than previous theoretical estimates, putting polaritons squarely into the strongly-interacting regime. When there is a condensate, we see a sharp transition to a different dependence of the renormalization on the density, which is evidence of many-body effects.
We study a two-dimensional incoherently pumped exciton-polariton condensate described by an open-dissipative Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the polariton dynamics coupled to a rate equation for the exciton density. Adopting a hydrodynamic approach, we use multiscale expansion methods to derive several models appearing in the context of shallow water waves with viscosity. In particular, we derive a Boussinesq/Benney-Luke type equation and its far-field expansion in terms of Kadomtsev-Petviashvili-I (KP-I) equations for right- and left-going waves. From the KP-I model, we predict the existence of vorticity-free, weakly (algebraically) localized two-dimensional dark-lump solitons. We find that, in the presence of dissipation, dark lumps exhibit a lifetime three times larger than that of planar dark solitons. Direct numerical simulations show that dark lumps do exist, and their dissipative dynamics is well captured by our analytical approximation. It is also shown that lump-like and vortex-like structures can spontaneously be formed as a result of the transverse snaking instability of dark soliton stripes.