Polariton Chimeras: Bose-Einstein Condensates with Intrinsic Chaoticity and Spontaneous Long-Range Ordering

The system of cavity polaritons driven by a plane electromagnetic wave is found to undergo the spontaneous breaking of spatial symmetry, which results in a lifted phase locking with respect to the driving field and, consequently, in the possibility of internal ordering. In particular, periodic spin and intensity patterns arise in polariton wires; they exhibit strong long-range order and can serve as media for signal transmission. Such patterns have the properties of dynamical chimeras: they are formed spontaneously in perfectly homogeneous media and can be partially chaotic. The reported new mechanism of chimera formation requires neither time-delayed feedback loops nor nonlocal interactions.

Figure 1

Spin pattern formation in a 1D system. (a) Time dependences of the pump intensity $|f{|}^2$ and the space-integrated cavity-field components $|{\psi }_{\pm }{|}^2$. (b) Spatiotemporal distribution of the circular-polarization degree ${\rho }_c=(|{\psi }_{+}{|}^2-|{\psi }_{-}{|}^2)/(|{\psi }_{+}{|}^2+|{\psi }_{-}{|}^2)$.

Figure 2

Steady-state patterns in a 1D system. Explicit spatial dependences of $|{\psi }_{+}{|}^2$ and $|{\psi }_{-}{|}^2$ at the final stage of the evolution displayed in Fig. 1 ($t\gtrsim 4\mathrm{ns}$).

Figure 3

Formation of a nonstatic chimera in a 1D polariton wire.

Figure 4

(a) Established spin distribution in a homogeneous 2D cavity under ring-shaped excitation. (b) Controlled spin inversion in reference granules 2–5. The additional laser pulse is focused into a $\mu \mathrm{m}$-sized spot at position 1; it has right circular polarization and acts within the shadowed time interval.