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Journal of Physics Conference Series

Bose-Einstein condensation of dipolar excitons in quantum wells

Vladislav B. Timofeev, А. В. Горбунов

Published Feb 1, 2009• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

The experiments on Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of dipolar (spatially-indirect) excitons in the lateral traps in GaAs/AlGaAs Schottky-diode heterostructures with double and single quantum wells are presented. The condensed part of dipolar excitons under detection in the far zone is placed in k -space in the range which is almost two orders of magnitude less than thermal exciton wave vector. BEC occurs spontaneously in a reservoir of thermalized excitons. Luminescence images of Bose-condensate of dipolar excitons exhibit along perimeter of circular trap axially symmetrical spatial structures of equidistant bright spots which strongly depend on excitation power and temperature. By means of two-beam interference experiments with the use of cw and pulsed photoexcitation it was found that the state of dipolar exciton Bose-condensate is spatially coherent and the whole patterned luminescence configuration in real space is described by a common wave function.

DOI
10.1088/1742-6596/148/1/012049

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The experiments on Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of dipolar (spatially-indirect) excitons in the lateral traps in GaAs/AlGaAs Schottky-diode heterostructures with double and single quantum wells are presented. The condensed part of dipolar excitons under detection in the far zone is placed in k -space in the range which is almost two orders of magnitude less than thermal exciton wave vector. BEC occurs spontaneously in a reservoir of thermalized excitons. Luminescence images of Bose-condensate of dipolar excitons exhibit along perimeter of circular trap axially symmetrical spatial structures of equidistant bright spots which strongly depend on excitation power and temperature. By means of two-beam interference experiments with the use of cw and pulsed photoexcitation it was found that the state of dipolar exciton Bose-condensate is spatially coherent and the whole patterned luminescence configuration in real space is described by a common wave function.
Correlations of the luminescence intensity (the second-order correlation function g (2)(τ)), where τ is the delay time between the photons detected in pairs) under the conditions of the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of dipolar excitons has been studied in a temperature range of 0.45–4.2 K. Photoexcited dipolar excitons have been accumulated in a lateral trap in a GaAs/AlGaAs Schottky diode with a 25-nm wide single quantum well with an electric bias applied across the heterolayers. Two-photon correlations have been measured with the use of a two-beam intensity interferometer with a time resolution of }~0.4 ns according to the well-known classical Hanbury-Brown-Twiss scheme. The photon bunching has been observed at the onset of Bose-Einstein condensation manifested by the appearance of a narrow exciton condensate line in the luminescence spectrum at an increase in the optical pumping (the line width near the threshold is ≲200 μeV). At the same time, the two-photon correlation function itself obeys the super-Poisson distribution, g (2)(τ) > 1, at time scale τc ≲ 1 ns of the system coherence. The photon bunching is absent at a pumping level substantially below the condensation threshold. The effect of bunching also decreases at pumping significantly above the threshold, when the narrow exciton condensate line starts to dominate in the luminescence spectra, and finally disappears with the further increase in the optical excitation. In this region, the distribution of pair photon correlations is a Poisson distribution manifesting the united quantum coherent state of the exciton condensate. Under the same conditions, the first-order spatial correlation function g (1)(r) determined from the interference pattern of the luminescence signals from the spatially separated parts of the condensate at constant pumping remains noticeable at distances of no less than 4 μm. The discovered effect of photon bunching is very sensitive to temperature and decreases by several times with a temperature increase in the range of 0.45–4.2 K. Assuming that the luminescence of the dipolar excitons directly reflects the coherence properties of the gas of interacting excitons, the discovered photon bunching at the onset of condensation, where the fluctuations of the exciton density and, consequently, of the luminescence intensity are most significant, indicates a phase transition in the interacting Bose gas of excitons, which is an independent way of detecting the Bose-Einstein condensation of excitons.
The phase diagram of Bose-Einstein condensates of dipolar excitons accumulated in lateral electrostatic traps is determined. Spatially periodic luminescence structures of the exciton Bose condensate and their critical dependence on pump level and temperature are observed. Coherence in the dipolar exciton Bose-Einstein condensates is studied by direct measurement of the 1-st and 2-nd order correlators with variations in pump level and temperature. These results are indicative of large-scale coherence of the exciton Bose condensate.
Abstract An unambiguous observation of the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of excitons in a photoexcited bulk semiconductor and elucidation of its inherent nature have been longstanding problems in condensed matter physics. Here, we observe the quantum phase transition and a Bose-Einstein condensate appearing in a trapped gas of 1s paraexcitons in bulk Cu2O below 400 mK, by directly visualizing the exciton cloud in real space using mid-infrared induced absorption imaging that we realized in a dilution refrigerator. Our study shows that the paraexciton condensate is undetectable by conventional luminescence spectroscopy. We find an unconventionally small condensate fraction of 0.016 with the spatial profile of the condensate well described by mean-field theory. Our discovery of this new type of BEC in the purely matter-like exciton system interacting with a cold phonon bath could pave the way for the classification of its long-range order, and for essential understanding of quantum statistical mechanics of non-equilibrium open systems.
We theoretically predict a strong influence of stimulated exciton-exciton scattering on semiconductor luminescence. The stimulated scattering causes circularly polarized instead of unpolarized emission at the biexciton emission line in a degenerate gas of partly spin polarized excitons. The biexciton polarization effect increases with increasing exciton densities and decreasing temperatures and approaches almost unity in the ultimate case of Bose-Einstein condensation. Time- and polarization-resolved luminescence measurements evidence the biexciton polarization effect both in ZnSe and GaAs quantum wells.
The nonlinear dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of dipolar excitons trapped in an external confining potential in coupled quantum wells is analyzed. It is demonstrated that under typical experimental conditions the dipolar exciton BEC can be described by a generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation with the local interaction between the excitons, which depends on the exciton distribution function. It is shown that, if the system is pumped at sufficiently high frequencies, a steady turbulent state can be formed.