Bose-Einstein condensation of photons thermalized with gaseous medium inside cavity

Alexander Kruchkov

The paper considers Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of light in a cavity with a medium. In the framework of a two-level model we show the effect of gaseous medium on the critical temperature of light condensation in the system. Transition of the system to the state with released light condensate is illustrated in consequent stages. Analytical expressions for a typical spatial extent of the condensed cloud of photons, as well for spectral characteristics of the condensate peak are derived. Energy and heat capacity of photons as functions of temperature are obtained. Finally, we demonstrate that the energy of light can be accumulated in the BEC state.

Allard P. Mosk

Jan Klaers, Julian Schmitt, Frank Vewinger +1 more

Christian Wahl, Marvin Hoffmann, Thilo vom Hövel +2 more

Bose-Einstein condensation, an effect long known for material particles as cold atomic gases, has in recent years also been observed for photons in microscopic optical cavities. Here, we report absorption and emission spectroscopic measurements on the lowest electronic transition ($5{p}^{6}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}5{p}^{5}6s$) of xenon, motivated by the search for a thermalization medium for photon Bose-Einstein condensation in the vacuum-ultraviolet spectral regime. We have recorded pressure-broadened xenon spectra in the 135- to 190-nm wavelength regime at conditions near the critical point. The explored pressure and temperature ranges include high-pressure gaseous xenon below the critical pressure and supercritical xenon at room temperature as well as liquid xenon close to the boiling point near the critical pressure.

Jan Klaers, Martin Weitz

We review recent experiments on the Bose-Einstein condensation of photons in a dye-filled optical microresonator. The most well-known example of a photon gas, photons in blackbody radiation, does not show Bose-Einstein condensation. Instead of massively populating the cavity ground mode, photons vanish in the cavity walls when they are cooled down. The situation is different in an ultrashort optical cavity imprinting a low-frequency cutoff on the photon energy spectrum that is well above the thermal energy. The latter allows for a thermalization process in which both temperature and photon number can be tuned independently of each other or, correspondingly, for a nonvanishing photon chemical potential. We here describe experiments demonstrating the fluorescence-induced thermalization and Bose-Einstein condensation of a two-dimensional photon gas in the dye microcavity. Moreover, recent measurements on the photon statistics of the condensate, showing Bose-Einstein condensation in the grand-canonical ensemble limit, will be reviewed. Introduction Quantum statistical effects become relevant when a gas of particles is cooled, or its density is increased, to the point where the associated de Broglie wavepackets spatially overlap. For particles with integer spin (bosons), the phenomenon of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) then leads to macroscopic occupation of a single quantum state at finite temperatures [1]. Bose-Einstein condensation in the gaseous case was first achieved in 1995 by laser and subsequent evaporative cooling of a dilute cloud of alkali atoms [2, 3, 4], as detailed in Chapter 3 of this volume. The condensate atoms can be described by a macroscopic singleparticle wavefunction, similar to the case of liquid helium [1]. Bose-Einstein condensation has also been observed for exciton-polaritons, which are hybrid states of matter and light [5, 6, 7] (see Chapter 4), magnons [8] (see Chapter 25), and other physical systems. Other than material particles, photons usually do not show Bose-Einstein condensation [9]. In blackbody radiation, the most common Bose gas, photons at low temperature disappear, instead of condensing to a macroscopically occupied ground-state mode. In this system, photons have a vanishing chemical potential, meaning that the number of photons is determined by the available thermal energy and cannot be tuned independently from temperature.

Prasanta Kumar Panigrahi, Anirban Dey, V. S. Ashoka