Statistical physics of Bose-Einstein condensed light in a dye microcavity
Jan Klaers, Julian Schmitt, Tobias Damm, Frank Vewinger, Martin Weitz
TL;DR
This paper theoretically investigates the temperature-dependent behavior of photon gases in a dye-filled microcavity, revealing Bose-Einstein condensation at low temperatures and predicting large condensate fluctuations due to grandcanonical exchange.
Contribution
It introduces a theoretical framework for photon BEC in dye microcavities and predicts unique fluctuation phenomena not seen in atomic BECs.
Findings
Photon Bose-Einstein condensation occurs at low temperatures.
Large condensate number fluctuations are predicted due to grandcanonical exchange.
The system exhibits distinct statistical properties compared to atomic BECs.
Abstract
We theoretically analyze the temperature behavior of paraxial light in thermal equilibrium with a dye-filled optical microcavity. At low temperatures the photon gas undergoes Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC), and the photon number in the cavity ground state becomes macroscopic with respect to the total photon number. Owing to a grandcanonical excitation exchange between the photon gas and the dye molecule reservoir, a regime with unusually large fluctuations of the condensate number is predicted for this system that is not observed in present atomic physics BEC experiments.
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