We report on the simultaneous observation of spontaneous symmetry breaking and long-range spatial coherence both in the strong and the weak-coupling regime in a semiconductor microcavity. Under pulsed excitation, the formation of a stochastic order p
arameter is observed in polariton and photon lasing regimes. Single-shot measurements of the Stokes vector of the emission exhibit the buildup of stochastic polarization. Below threshold, the polarization noise does not exceed 10%, while above threshold we observe a total polarization of up to 50% after each excitation pulse, while the polarization averaged over the ensemble of pulses remains nearly zero. In both polariton and photon lasing regimes, the stochastic polarization buildup is accompanied by the buildup of spatial coherence. We find that the Landau criterion of spontaneous symmetry breaking and Penrose-Onsager criterion of long-range order for Bose-Einstein condensation are met in both polariton and photon lasing regimes.
We report on the experimental observation of the non-linear analogue of the optical spin Hall effect under highly non-resonant circularly polarized excitation of an exciton polariton condensate in a GaAs/AlGaAs microcavity. Initially circularly polar
ized polariton condensates propagate over macroscopic distances while the collective condensate spins coherently precess around an effective magnetic field in the sample plane performing up to four complete revolutions.
In this Letter we show how a single beam optical trap offers the means for three-dimensional manipulation of semiconductor nanorods in solution. Furthermore rotation of the direction of the electric field provides control over the orientation of the
nanorods, which is shown by polarisation analysis of two photon induced fluorescence. Statistics over tens of trapped agglomerates reveal a correlation between the measured degree of polarisation, the trap stiffness and the intensity of the emitted light, confirming that we are approaching the single particle limit.
BEC of exciton-polaritons and related effects such as superfluidity1,2, spontaneous symmetry breaking3,4 and quantised vortices5,6 open way to creation of novel light sources7 and optical logic elements8. Remarkable observations of exciton-polariton
BEC in microcavities9-12 have been reported in the recent ten years. Very recently, thermalisation and subsequent condensation of cavity photons in a dye-filled microcavity have been observed13. Here we show that BEC of both exciton-polaritons and photons can be created in the same system under different optical excitation conditions. A dynamic phase transition between a photon and a polariton BEC takes place after a single high-power excitation pulse and we find both condensed states in thermal equilibrium with the excited states. At the crossover, photons and polaritons coexist, which results in a decrease in the long-range spatial coherence. Build-up and successive depinning of polarisation is observed at the threshold of both polariton and photon condensation.
