Polarization and Propagation of Polariton Condensates

With the use of the generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation it is shown that exciton polaritons in semiconductor microcavities form a linearly polarized condensate having two branches of the excitation spectrum. The splitting between these branches is strongly anisotropic. This anisotropy noticeably affects the real-space dynamics of polariton condensates.

Figure 1

Showing the dispersion of bare (dashed lines) and renormalized (solid lines) lower-polariton branches in the region of strong coupling. The splitting is shown in a dash-dotted line. The wave vector is perpendicular to the condensate polarization in panel (a) and collinear with it in panel (b). Panel (c) shows the overall behavior of the splitting. Parameters are given in the text.

Figure 2

Real-space image of the photon part of the wave function, showing evolution of a Gaussian shape pulse in nonlinear regime in $x$ and $y$ polarizations. Zero time corresponds to the peak intensity of the pulse.