Superfluid Phase Transition of Long-Lifetime Polaritons

Neil Na

Gangqiang Liu, Bryan Nelson, Mark Steger +4 more

Bao Jia, Lei Tan

In this paper, based on the effective Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard model Hamiltonian in the presence of detuning, we use the mean-field and the perturbation theory to figure out the superfluid order parameter of the system. By which we find that detuning from resonance allows one to drive the system from the superfluid into the insulator state of the polaritons and the reverse. In addition, combining with the properties of transportation of coupled dissipative cavity arrays with detuning, we discuss the influence of detuning on the number of superfluid polaritons and the lifetime of superfluid states. It suggests that the number of the superfluid polaritons will increase to its maximum and then reduce again along the negative part of detuning, which is similar to the spectrum of the transmission.

Hamid Ohadi, A. Dreismann, Yuri G. Rubo +6 more

Polariton condensates can store bits of information and are characterized by long lifetimes. Researchers experimentally show how a polariton condensate acts as an optical spin memory that can be rapidly flipped.

Fabrice P. Laussy

Jonathan Keeling, Francesca Maria Marchetti

The experimental realization of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) with atoms and quasiparticles has triggered wide exploration of macroscopic quantum effects.Microcavity polaritons are of particular interest because quantum phenomena such as BEC and superfluidity can be observed at elevated temperatures.However, polariton lifetimes are typically too short to permit thermal equilibration.This has led to debate about whether polariton condensation is intrinsically a nonequilibrium effect.Here we report the first unambiguous observation of BEC of optically trapped polaritons in thermal equilibrium in a high-Q microcavity, evidenced by equilibrium Bose-Einstein distributions over broad ranges of polariton densities and bath temperatures.With thermal equilibrium established, we verify that polariton condensation is a phase transition with a well-defined density-temperature phase diagram.The measured phase boundary agrees well with the predictions of basic quantum gas theory.