Superconductivity with excitons and polaritons

TL;DR

This paper investigates how exciton and polariton condensates can mediate electron pairing to potentially achieve high-temperature superconductivity in semiconductor microcavities and quantum well structures.

Contribution

It analyzes the attractive interaction mechanisms and gap equations in Bose-Fermi mixtures, highlighting complex but optimizable conditions for superconductivity.

Findings

Interaction engineering is complex but offers optimization potential.

Conditions for high-temperature superconductivity are promising in multilayer structures.

Analysis of gap equations suggests feasible pathways for superconductivity.

Abstract

A Bose--Einstein condensate of exciton polaritons coexisting with a Fermi gas of electrons has been recently proposed as a promising system for realisation of room-temperature superconductivity [Phys. Rev. Lett., 104, 106402 (2010)]. In order to find the optimum conditions for exciton and exciton-polariton mediated superconductivity, we study the attractive mechanism between electrons of a Cooper pair mediated by the exciton and exciton-polariton condensate and analyze the gap equation that follows. We specifically address microcavities with embedded n-doped quantum wells as well as coupled quantum wells hosting a condensate of spatially indirect excitons, put in contact with a two-dimensional electron gas. We show that engineering of the interaction in these peculiar Bose-Fermi mixtures is complex and sometimes counterintuitive, but leaves much freedom for optimization, making promising the realization of high-temperature superconductivity in multilayer semiconductor structures.