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Published on: August 2, 2019
Theory of two-component superfluidity of microcavity polaritons
A Nafis Arafat1,2, Oleg L Berman1,3, Godfrey Gumbs1,2,4
1The Graduate School and University Center, The City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
Abstract:
We develop a microscopic mean-field theory describing the coexistence of Bose-Einstein condensates of upper and lower polaritons (UP/LP) in a semiconductor microcavity. Incorporating interbranch scattering within a modified polariton Hamiltonian, we introduce a phenomenological population-split parameterαthat quantifies the relative LP/UP occupations. At zero detuning, the critical temperature becomes independent ofα, converging to a single value that marks the balanced, resonant regime. Away from resonance, variations inαlead to distinctive and experimentally resolvable changes in both the sound velocitycsand critical temperatureTc, relative to the single-component (LP-only) condensate limit. The system under study consists of excitons confined in a transition metal dichalcogenide monolayer, particularly WSe2embedded within a planar optical microcavity of GaAs where they strongly couple to cavity photons. Our analysis focuses on monolayer WSe2embedded in a GaAs microcavity. We present results for GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells embedded in a GaAs microcavity in the appendix. While mean-field in scope, the framework provides analytic benchmarks and physical insight for future treatments that include dissipation and fluctuations in nonequilibrium polariton superfluids.
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