Single-shot condensation of exciton polaritons and the hole burning effect

• Main Authors: Snoke, D. W., Truscott, A. G., Estrecho, E., Gao, T., Bobrovska, N., Fraser, M. D., Steger, M., Pfeiffer, L., West, K., Liew, Timothy Chi Hin, Matuszewski, M., Ostrovskaya, E. A.
• Other Authors: School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science::Physics; Exciton Polaritons; Single-shot Condensation
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/89121; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/46076
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

A bosonic condensate of exciton polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity is a macroscopic quantum state subject to pumping and decay. The fundamental nature of this driven-dissipative condensate is still under debate. Here, we gain an insight into spontaneous condensation by imaging long-lifetime exciton polaritons in a high-quality inorganic microcavity in a single-shot optical excitation regime, without averaging over multiple condensate realisations. We demonstrate that condensation is strongly influenced by an incoherent reservoir and that the reservoir depletion, the so-called spatial hole burning, is critical for the transition to the ground state. Condensates of photon-like polaritons exhibit strong shot-to-shot fluctuations and density filamentation due to the effective self-focusing associated with the reservoir depletion. In contrast, condensates of exciton-like polaritons display smoother spatial density distributions and are second-order coherent. Our observations show that the single-shot measurements offer a unique opportunity to study fundamental properties of non-equilibrium condensation in the presence of a reservoir.