Cavity polaritons in the presence of symmetry-breaking disorder: closed-path time formalism

TL;DR

This paper develops a nonperturbative field-theoretical approach using closed-path time Green's functions to study cavity polaritons under symmetry-breaking disorder, challenging previous replica-based models and highlighting limitations of existing theories.

Contribution

It introduces a new nonperturbative method with Schwinger-Dyson equations for disordered cavity polaritons, contrasting with prior replica trick approaches and revealing their limitations.

Findings

Schwinger-Dyson equations differ from Zittartz's saddle-point equations

Replica trick may not be valid for disordered cavity polaritons

New field-theoretical framework for disorder effects in cavity QED systems

Abstract

According to the mean-field theory of Zittartz, when subject to a symmetry-breaking disorder, the order parameter and the energy gap of an excitonic insulator are gradually suppressed up to a critical disorder strength. Recently, Marchetti, Simons, and Littlewood have used a replica trick to investigate the effects of disorder on the condensation of cavity polaritons. Within their nonlinear sigma model, it was found that the saddle-point equations assume the form reported previously by Zittartz in the contest of the symmetry broken excitonic insulator, but with an order parameter, to which both photons and excitons contribute. In this paper, we apply a closed-path time Green's function approach as an alternative to the replica technique to formulate a nonperturbative description of cavity polaritons in the presence of a symmetry-breaking disorder. A field theoretical method is used to derive the Schwinger-Dyson equations for the average photon field and the average single-particle Green's function. In contrast with the nonlinear sigma model and the corresponding saddle-point equations, we obtain that the exact Schwinger-Dyson equations cannot be mapped to the corresponding equations derived by Zittartz. This result not only shows that the theory of Zittartz cannot be applied to the excitons in a disordered quantum well coupled to the cavity photons with only minor modifications, but arises a question about the validity of the replica trick as well.