• Corpus ID: 252568307

Enhanced thermalization of exciton-polaritons in optically generated potentials

@inproceedings{Yoon2022EnhancedTO,
  title={Enhanced thermalization of exciton-polaritons in optically generated potentials},
  author={Yoseob Yoon and Jude Deschamps and Mark Steger and Ken W. West and Loren N. Pfeiffer and David W. Snoke and Keith A. Nelson},
  year={2022}
}

• Y. Yoon, Jude Deschamps, +4 authors K. Nelson
• Published 27 September 2022
• Physics

Equilibrium Bose-Einstein condensation of exciton-polaritons, demonstrated with a long-lifetime microcavity [Phys. Rev. Lett. 118 , 016602 (2017)], has proven that driven-dissipative systems can undergo thermodynamic phase transitions in the limit where the quasiparticle lifetime exceeds the thermalization time. Here, we identify the role of dimensionality and polariton interactions in de-termining the degree of thermalization in optically generated traps. To distinguish the effect of trapping from interactions and lifetimes, we measured the polariton distribution under four nonresonant Gaussian pumps in a square geometry and compared it with polariton distributions measured with each pump individually. We found that significant redistribution of polaritons arises by trapping and modification of the density of states. Surprisingly efficient polariton-polariton scattering below the condensation threshold is evidenced by the depletion of the inflection-point polaritons. Our work provides a deeper understanding of polariton distributions and their interactions under various geometries of optically generated potentials.