For a coherent quantum mechanical two-level system driven with a linearly time-dependent detuning, the Landau-Zener model has served over decades as a textbook model of quantum dynamics. A particularly intriguing question is whether that framework can be extended to capture an intrinsical nonequilibrium nature for a quantum system with coherent and dissipative dynamics occurring on an equal footing. In this work, we are motivated to investigate the Landau-Zenner problem of polariton condensates in a periodic potential under nonresonant pumping, considering driven-dissipative Gross-Pitaevskii equations coupled to the rate equation of a reservoir. Using a two-mode approach, we find fluctuation of the reservoir can be considered as a constant and the relative phase plays a very important role. The evolution of the dissipative Landau-Zener model we obtain presents its adiabatic process very different from the closed system because the fluctuation of the reservoir has a peak and leads to the damping of the condensates. We substitute the fluctuation of the reservoir to Hamiltonian and get an effective two-level model. The motion of Hamiltonian in phase space is also discussed and is directly corresponding to the pumping rate. The instability of the band structure can also be studied by the curvatures in phase space and there may be two loops in the middle of the Brillouin zone when the pumping rate is far beyond the threshold.
We study the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless mechanism for vortex-antivortex pair formation in two-dimensional superfluids for nonequilibrium condensates. Our numerical study is based on a classical field model for driven-dissipative quantum fluids that is applicable to polariton condensates. We investigate the critical noise needed to create vortex-antivortex pairs in the systems, starting from a state with uniform phase. The dependence of the critical noise on the nonequilibrium and energy relaxation parameters is analyzed in detail.
We consider a condensate of exciton-polaritons in a diluted magnetic semiconductor microcavity. Such system may exhibit magnetic self-trapping in the case of sufficiently strong coupling between polaritons and magnetic ions embedded in the semiconductor. We investigate the effect of the nonequilibrium nature of exciton-polaritons on the physics of the resulting self-trapped magnetic polarons. We find that multiple polarons can exist at the same time, and derive a critical condition for self-trapping which is different to the one predicted previously in the equilibrium case. Using the Bogoliubo…
We perform a numerical study on the two-dimensional nonequilibrium exciton-polariton systems driven by incoherent pumping based on the stochastic generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We calculate the density fluctuation, coherence function, and scaling function. It is found that the correlations at short range agree with the Bogoliubov linear theory. While at large distance, both static and dynamic correlations are characterized by the nonlinear scaling behaviors of Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class, especially when the interaction is weak. In this regime, scaling analyses are cru…
We investigate the process of coarsening via annihilation of vortex-antivortex pairs, following the quench to the condensate phase in a nonresonantly pumped polariton system. We find that the late-time dynamics is an example of universal phase ordering kinetics, characterized by scaling of correlation functions in time. Depending on the parameters of the system, the evolution of the characteristic length scale L(t) can be the same as for the two-dimensional XY model, described by a power law with the dynamical exponent z \aprox 2 and a logarithmic correction, or z \aprox 1 which agrees with pr…
The property of superfluidity, first discovered in liquid 4He, is closely related to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of interacting bosons. However, even at zero temperature, when one would expect the whole bosonic quantum liquid to become condensed, a fraction of it is excited into higher momentum states via interparticle interactions and quantum fluctuations -- the phenomenon of quantum depletion. Quantum depletion of weakly interacting atomic BECs in thermal equilibrium is well understood theoretically but is difficult to measure. This is even more challenging in driven-dissipative systems…
We investigate the process of condensation of exciton-polaritons in a one-dimensional nanowire, predicting spontaneous formation of domains of uncondensed excitons and condensed polaritons. We demonstrate a universal scaling law for the density of domains, which results from the competition between characteristic timescales present in the system. However, we find that the system does not follow the standard Kibble-Żurek scenario of a nonequilibrium phase transition.
We develop a quantum field theory for parametrically pumped polaritons using Keldysh Green's function techniques. By considering the mean-field and Gaussian fluctuations, we find that the low energy physics of the highly non-equilibrium phase transition to the optical parametric oscillator regime is in many ways similar to equilibrium condensation. In particular, we show that this phase transition can be associated with an effective chemical potential, at which the system's bosonic distribution function diverges, and an effective temperature. As in equilibrium systems, the transition is achiev…
Quasiparticles in semiconductors -- such as microcavity polaritons -- can form condensates in which the steady-state density profile is set by the balance of pumping and decay. By taking account of the polarization degree of freedom for a polariton condensate, and considering the effects of an applied magnetic field, we theoretically discuss the interplay between polarization dynamics, and the spatial structure of the pumped decaying condensate. If spatial structure is neglected, this dynamics has attractors that are linearly polarized condensates (fixed points), and desynchronized solutions (…
Collective Excitations and Stability of Nonequilibrium Polariton Supersolids
Abrikosov Center for Theoretical Physics, Moscow Center for Advanced Studies（莫斯科高级研究中心阿布里科索夫理论物理中心）；National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute)（莫斯科工程物理国立研究核大学）；Russian Quantum Center, Skolkovo IC（俄罗斯量子中心斯科尔科沃创新中心）
Exciton-polaritons constitute a unique realization of a quantum fluid interacting with its environment. Using Selenide based microcavities, we exploit this feature to warm up a polariton condensate in a controlled way and monitor its spatial coherence. We determine directly the amount of heat picked up by the condensate by measuring the phonon-polariton scattering rate and comparing it with the loss rate. We find that upon increasing the heating rate, the spatial coherence length decreases markedly, while localized phase structures vanish, in good agreement with a stochastic mean field theory.…
We present a reaction/diffusion model for the formation of a lower polariton condensate in a micro cavity containing an organic semiconducting molecular crystalline film. Our model--based upon an anthracene film sandwiched between two reflecting dielectric mirrors--consists of three coupled fields corresponding to a gas of excitons created by an external driving pulse, a reservoir of vibron states formed by the coupling between a ground-state vibrational model and a cavity photon, and a lower polariton condensate. We show that at finite temperature, the presence of the vibron reservoir can aug…
Exciton-polaritons are a coherent electron-hole-photon (e-h-p) system where condensation has been observed in semiconductor microcavities. In contrast to equilibrium Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) for long lifetime systems, polariton condensates have a dynamical nonequilibrium feature owing to the similar physical structure that they have to semiconductor lasers. One of the distinguishing features of a condensate to a laser is the presence of strong coupling between the matter and photon fields. Irrespective of its equilibrium or nonequilibrium nature, exciton-polariton have been observed to…
We investigate theoretically the creation, persistence and detection of quantized vortices in nonequilibrium polariton condensates within a stochastic classical field model. The life time of the quantized vortices is shown to increase with the spatial coherence and to depend on the geometry of the condensate. The relation with superfluidity in conventional superfluids is discussed. Three different ways to measure the vorticity of the polariton condensate are proposed.
We study quasiparticle scattering effects on the dynamics of a homogeneous Bose-Einstein condensate of ultracold atoms coupled to a single mode of an optical cavity. The relevant excitations, which are polariton-like mixed excitations of photonic and atomic density-wave modes, are identified. All the first-order correlation functions are presented by means of the Keldysh Green's function technique. Beyond confirming the existence of the resonant enhancement of Beliaev damping, we find a very structured spectrum of fluctuations. There is a spectral hole burning at half of the recoil frequency r…
We perform quantum tomography on one-dimensional polariton condensates, spontaneously occurring in linear disorder valleys in a CdTe planar microcavity sample. By the use of optical interferometric techniques, we determine the first-order coherence function and the amplitude and phase of the order parameter of the condensate, providing a full reconstruction of the single particle density matrix for the polariton system. The experimental data are used as input to theoretically test the consistency of Penrose-Onsager criterion for Bose-Einstein condensation in the framework of nonequilibrium pol…
Steady states reached in a coherently pumped exciton-polariton superfluid are investigated. As the pump parameter is changed, the translational symmetry of the uniform system is spontaneously broken, and various steady patterns of quantized vortices are formed. This is peculiar to nonequilibrium dissipative systems with continuous pumping.
Nonequilibrium dynamics and effective thermalization are studied in a resonant tunneling scenario via multilevel Landau-Zener crossings. Our realistic many-body system, composed of two energy bands, naturally allows a separation of degrees of freedom. This gives access to an effective temperature and single- and two-body observables to characterize the delocalization of eigenstates and the nonequilibrium dynamics of our paradigmatic complex quantum system.
We present a theoretical study of vortices in arrays of photon condensates. Even when interactions are negligible, as is the case in current experiments, pumping and losses can lead to a finite vortex core size. While some properties of photon condensate vortices, such as their self-acceleration and the generation of vortex pairs by a moving vortex, resemble those in interacting polariton condensates far from equilibrium, in several aspects they differ from previously studied systems: the vortex core size is determined by the balance between pumping and tunneling, the core appears oblate in th…
We show that a lattice of phase oscillators with random natural frequencies, described by a generalization of the nearest-neighbor Kuramoto model with an additional cosine coupling term, undergoes a phase transition from a desynchronized to a synchronized state. This model may be derived from the complex Ginzburg-Landau equations describing a disordered lattice of driven-dissipative Bose-Einstein condensates of exciton polaritons. We derive phase diagrams that classify the desynchronized and synchronized states that exist in both one and two dimensions. This is achieved by outlining the connec…
We propose a method to enhance the spatial coupling between ballistic exciton-polariton condensates in a semiconductor microcavity based on available spatial light modulator technologies. Our method, verified by numerically solving a generalized Gross-Pitaevskii model, exploits the strong nonequilibrium nature of exciton-polariton condensation driven by localized nonresonant optical excitation. Tailoring the excitation beam profile from a Gaussian into a polygonal shape results in refracted and focused radial streams of outflowing polaritons from the excited condensate which can be directed to…
We investigate theoretically nonequilibrium effects on photoluminescence and gain/absorption spectra of a driven-dissipative exciton-polariton condensate, by employing the combined Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory with the generalized random phase approximation extended to the Keldysh formalism. Our calculated photoluminescence spectra is in semiquantitative agreement with experiments, where features such as a blue shift of the emission from the condensate, the appearance of the dispersionless feature of a diffusive Goldstone mode, and the suppression of the dispersive profile of the mode are ob…
We present the theoretical prediction of spontaneous rotating vortex rings in a parametrically driven quantum fluid of polaritons -- coherent superpositions of coupled quantum well excitons and microcavity photons. These rings arise not only in the absence of any rotating drive, but also in the absence of a trapping potential, in a model known to map quantitatively to experiments. We begin by proposing a novel parametric pumping scheme for polaritons, with circular symmetry and radial currents, and characterize the resulting nonequilibrium condensate. We show that the system is unstable to spo…
Dynamical Superfluid and Bose-Insulator Phases in Quantized Polariton Lattices
School of Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen)（香港中文大学（深圳）理学院）；Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences（北京量子信息科学研究院）
We study the Bose polaron problem in a nonequilibrium setting, by considering an impurity embedded in a quantum fluid of light realized by exciton-polaritons in a microcavity, subject to a coherent drive and dissipation on account of pump and cavity losses. We obtain the polaron effective mass, the drag force acting on the impurity, and determine polaron trajectories at a semiclassical level. We find different dynamical regimes, originating from the unique features of the excitation spectrum of driven-dissipative polariton fluids, in particular a non-trivial regime of acceleration against the …
We investigate the steady state phase diagram of two-component driven open condensates in one dimension. We identify a miscible-immiscible transition which is predominantly driven by gapped density fluctuations and occurs upon increasing the inter-component inelastic coupling. Below the transition in the miscible phase, we find the effective long wavelength dynamics to be described by a two-component Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation that belongs to the nonequilibrium universality class of the one-dimensional single-component KPZ equation at generic choices of parameters. Our results are rele…
Mass-anisotropy driven stripe pattern formation and directional modulational instability in polariton condensate
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur（印度理工学院卡拉格普尔分校）；Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar（印度理工学院甘地纳加尔分校）；Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems（马克斯·普朗克复杂系统物理研究所）；Department of Physics, Virginia Tech（弗吉尼亚理工大学物理系）
In recent years, experiments by several groups have demonstrated spontaneous coherence in polariton systems, which can be viewed as a type of nonequilibrium Bose-Einstein condensation. In these systems, the polariton lifetime is longer than, but not much longer than, the polariton-polariton scattering time which leads to the thermalization. By contrast, over the past twenty years several groups have pursued experiments in a different system, which has very long exciton lifetime, up to 30 microseconds or more, essentially infinite compared to the thermalization time of the excitons. Thermal equ…
Observations of polariton condensation in semiconductor microcavities suggest that polaritons can be exploited as a novel type of laser with low input-power requirements. The low-excitation regime is approximately equivalent to thermal equilibrium, and a higher excitation results in more dominant nonequilibrium features. Although standard photon lasing has been experimentally observed in the high excitation regime, e-h pair binding can still remain even in the high-excitation regime theoretically. Therefore, the photoluminescence with a different photon lasing mechanism is predicted to be diff…
Nonequilibrium condensate systems such as exciton-polariton condensates are capable of supporting a spontaneous vortex nucleation. The spatial inhomogeneity of pumping field or/and disordered potential creates velocity flow fields that may become unstable to vortex formation. This letter considers ways in which turbulent states of interacting vortices can be created. It is shown that by combining just two pumping intensities it is possible to create a superfluid turbulence state of well-separated vortices, a strong turbulence state of de-structured vortices, or a weak turbulence state in which…
Phase transitions, where observable properties of a many-body system change discontinuously, can occur in both open and closed systems. Ultracold atoms have provided an exemplary model system to demonstrate the physics of closed-system phase transitions, confirming many theoretical models and results. Our understanding of dissipative phase transitions in quantum systems is less developed, and experiments that probe this physics even less so. By placing cold atoms in optical cavities, and inducing strong coupling between light and excitations of the atoms, one can experimentally study phase tra…
We propose a novel mechanism for a nonequilibrium phase transition in a $U(1)$-broken phase of an electron-hole-photon system, from a Bose-Einstein condensate of polaritons to a photon laser, induced by the non-Hermitian nature of the condensate. We show that a (uniform) steady state of the condensate can always be classified into two types, namely, arising either from lower or upper-branch polaritons. We prove (for a general model) and demonstrate (for a particular model of polaritons) that an exceptional point where the two types coalesce marks the endpoint of a first-order-like phase bounda…
Interacting Bose-Fermi systems play a central role in condensed matter physics. Here, we analyze a novel Bose-Fermi mixture formed by a cavity exciton-polariton condensate interacting with a two-dimensional electron system. We show that that previous predictions of superconductivity [F.P. Laussy, Phys. Rev. Lett. 10, 104 (2010)] and excitonic supersolid formation [I.A. Shelykh, Phys. Rev. Lett. 14, 105 (2010)] in this system are closely intertwined- resembling the predictions for strongly correlated electron systems such as high temperature superconductors. In stark contrast to a large majorit…
The realization of exciton-polaritons -- hybrid excitations of semiconductor quantum well excitons and cavity photons -- has been of great technological and scientific significance. In particular, the short-range collisional interaction between excitons has enabled explorations into a wealth of nonequilibrium and hydrodynamical effects that arise in weakly nonlinear polariton condensates. Yet, the ability to enhance optical nonlinearities would enable quantum photonics applications and open up a new realm of photonic many-body physics in a scalable and engineerable solid-state environment. Her…
We derive a theory for Bose condensation in nonequilibrium steady states of bosonic quantum gases that are coupled both to a thermal heat bath and to a pumped reservoir (or gain medium), while suffering from loss. Such a scenario describes photonic many-body systems such as exciton-polariton gases. Our analysis is based on a set of kinetic equations for a gas of noninteracting bosons. By identifying a dimensionless scaling parameter controlling the boson density, we derive a sharp criterion for which system states become selected to host a macroscopic occupation. We show that with increasing p…
We observe the joint spin-spatial (spinor) self-organization of a two-component BEC strongly coupled to an optical cavity. This unusual nonequilibrium Hepp-Lieb-Dicke phase transition is driven by an off-resonant two-photon Raman transition formed from a classical pump field and the emergent quantum dynamical cavity field. This mediates a spinor-spinor interaction that, above a critical strength, simultaneously organizes opposite spinor states of the BEC on opposite checkerboard configurations of an emergent 2D lattice. The resulting spinor density-wave polariton condensate is observed by dire…
