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Published on: March 30, 2017
Relaxation oscillations in the formation of a polariton condensate
Milena De Giorgi1, Dario Ballarini1, Paolo Cazzato1
1NNL, Istituto Nanoscienze - Cnr, Via Arnesano, 73100 Lecce, Italy and CBN-IIT, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Barsanti, 73010 Lecce, Italy.
Abstract:
We report observation of oscillations in the dynamics of a microcavity polariton condensate formed under pulsed nonresonant excitation. While oscillations in a condensate have always been attributed to Josephson mechanisms due to a chemical potential unbalance, here we show that under some localization conditions of the condensate, they may arise from relaxation oscillations, a pervasive classical dynamics that repeatedly provokes the sudden decay of a reservoir, shutting off relaxation as the reservoir is replenished. Using nonresonant excitation, it is thus possible to obtain condensate injection pulses with a record frequency of 0.1 THz.
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