Dark exciton study

Yuchen Han, David Hsieh

Maria Maragkou

Christine Middleton

Monique Combescot, R. Combescot, Mathieu Alloing +1 more

We propose optical means to reveal the presence of a dark exciton condensate that does not yield any photoluminescence at all. We show that i) the dark exciton density can be obtained from the blueshift of the excitonic absorption line induced by dark excitons; ii) the polarization of the dark condensate can be obtained from the blueshift dependence on the probe photon polarization as well as from the Faraday effect. All these effects result from carrier exchanges between dark and bright states.

Karl W. Böer, Udo W. Pohl

Monique Combescot, M. G. Moore, Carlo Piermarocchi

We propose a mechanism for optical trapping of dark excitons by linearly polarized unabsorbed standing waves, with a potential depth of the order of a few meV. Since this trapping, based on carrier exchanges with virtual excitons coupled to unabsorbed photons, equally acts on bright and dark states, Bose-Einstein condensation of excitons--which occurs in dark states--must appear as dark spots in a cloud of bright excitons, at the trap potential minima, when the temperature decreases.