No Arabic abstract
The property of superfluidity, first discovered in liquid 4He, is closely related to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of interacting bosons. However, even at zero temperature, when one would expect the whole bosonic quantum liquid to become condensed, a fraction of it is excited into higher momentum states via interparticle interactions and quantum fluctuations -- the phenomenon of quantum depletion. Quantum depletion of weakly interacting atomic BECs in thermal equilibrium is well understood theoretically but is difficult to measure. This is even more challenging in driven-dissipative systems such as exciton-polariton condensates(photons coupled to electron-hole pairs in a semiconductor), since their nonequilibrium nature is predicted to suppress quantum depletion. Here, we observe quantum depletion of an optically trapped high-density exciton-polariton condensate by directly detecting the spectral branch of elementary excitations populated by this process. Analysis of the population of this branch in momentum space shows that quantum depletion of an exciton-polariton condensate can closely follow or strongly deviate from the equilibrium Bogoliubov theory, depending on the fraction of matter (exciton) in an exciton-polariton. Our results reveal the effects of exciton-polariton interactions beyond the mean-field description and call for a deeper understanding of the relationship between equilibrium and nonequilibrium BECs.
Singly quantized vortices have been already observed in many systems including the superfluid helium, Bose Einstein condensates of dilute atomic gases, and condensates of exciton polaritons in the solid state. Two dimensional superfluids carrying spin are expected to demonstrate a different type of elementary excitations referred to as half quantum vortices characterized by a pi rotation of the phase and a pi rotation of the polarization vector when circumventing the vortex core. We detect half quantum vortices in an exciton-polariton condensate by means of polarization resolved interferometry, real space spectroscopy and phase imaging. Half quantum vortices coexist with single quantum vortices in our sample.
We consider a condensate of exciton-polaritons in a diluted magnetic semiconductor microcavity. Such system may exhibit magnetic self-trapping in the case of sufficiently strong coupling between polaritons and magnetic ions embedded in the semiconductor. We investigate the effect of the nonequilibrium nature of exciton-polaritons on the physics of the resulting self-trapped magnetic polarons. We find that multiple polarons can exist at the same time, and derive a critical condition for self-trapping which is different to the one predicted previously in the equilibrium case. Using the Bogoliubov-de Gennes approximation, we calculate the excitation spectrum and provide a physical explanation in terms of the effective magnetic attraction between polaritons, mediated by the ion subsystem.
For a coherent quantum mechanical two-level system driven with a linearly time-dependent detuning, the Landau-Zener model has served over decades as a textbook model of quantum dynamics. A particularly intriguing question is whether that framework can be extended to capture an intrinsical nonequilibrium nature for a quantum system with coherent and dissipative dynamics occurring on an equal footing. In this work, we are motivated to investigate the Landau-Zenner problem of polariton condensates in a periodic potential under nonresonant pumping, considering driven-dissipative Gross-Pitaevskii equations coupled to the rate equation of a reservoir. Using a two-mode approach, we find fluctuation of the reservoir can be considered as a constant and the relative phase plays a very important role. The evolution of the dissipative Landau-Zener model we obtain presents its adiabatic process very different from the closed system because the fluctuation of the reservoir has a peak and leads to the damping of the condensates. We substitute the fluctuation of the reservoir to Hamiltonian and get an effective two-level model. The motion of Hamiltonian in phase space is also discussed and is directly corresponding to the pumping rate. The instability of the band structure can also be studied by the curvatures in phase space and there may be two loops in the middle of the Brillouin zone when the pumping rate is far beyond the threshold.
Rotation of a container holding a viscous fluid forms a vortex which grows with increasing angular velocity. A superfluid, however, is intrinsically different from these normal fluids because its rotation is quantized. Even if a container of superfluid is rotating, the fluid itself remains still until a critical velocity is reached. Beyond the critical velocity, all the particles conspire to suddenly pick up an angular momentum of $hbar$ each and forms a quantized vortex. As a result, a superfluid is known to increase its rotation by a total angular momentum of $Nhbar$. In this letter, we show that exciton-polariton superfluid can split into an irrotational part and a rotational part. The relative ratio between the two states can be controlled by either pump beams power or spot size. Consequently, angular momentum of exciton-polariton superfluid can be tuned from zero to $Nhbar$ continuously. This striking observation sets the stage for studying non-equilibrium properties of a superfluid with exciton-polaritons.
We report on time resolved measurements of the first order spatial coherence in an exciton polariton Bose-Einstein condensate. Long range spatial coherence is found to set in right at the onset of stimulated scattering, on a picosecond time scale. The coherence reaches its maximum value after the population and decays slower, staying up to a few hundreds of picoseconds. This behavior can be qualitatively reproduced, using a stochastic classical field model describing interaction between the polariton condensate and the exciton reservoir within a disordered potential.