Optically pumping high quality semiconductor microcavities allows for the spontaneous formation of polariton condensates, which can propagate over distances of many microns. Tightly focussed pump spots here are found to produce expanding incoherent b
ottleneck polaritons which coherently amplify the ballistic polaritons and lead to the formation of unusual ring condensates. This quantum liquid is found to form a remarkable sunflower-like spatial ripple pattern which arises from self interference with Rayleigh-scattered coherent polariton waves in the Cerenkov regime.
Replacing independent single quantum wells inside a strongly-coupled semiconductor microcavity with double quantum wells produces a special type of polariton. Using asymmetric double quantum wells in devices processed into mesas allows the alignment
of the electron levels to be voltage-tuned. At the resonant electronic tunnelling condition, we demonstrate that `oriented polaritons are formed, which possess greatly enhanced dipole moments. Since the polariton-polariton scattering rate depends on this dipole moment, such devices could reach polariton lasing, condensation and optical nonlinearities at much lower threshold powers.
