Ignition and formation dynamics of a polariton condensate on a semiconductor microcavity pillar

TL;DR

This paper experimentally investigates the ignition and decay of polariton optical parametric oscillation in a semiconductor microcavity pillar, revealing detailed dynamics and spectral properties through combined experimental and theoretical analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a method to observe full real-time dynamics of polariton OPO ignition and decay using combined pump and probe techniques, supported by theoretical simulations.

Findings

Probe-induced blue-shift triggers OPO resonance.

Real-time resolution of OPO emission over 1 nanosecond.

Spectral tomography characterizes the emission properties.

Abstract

We present an experimental study on the ignition and decay of a polariton optical parametric oscillator (OPO) in a semiconductor microcavity pillar. The combination of a continuous wave laser pump, under quasi-phase matching conditions, and a non-resonant, 2 ps-long pulse probe allows us to obtain the full dynamics of the system. The arrival of the probe induces a blue-shift in the polariton emission, bringing the OPO process into resonance with the pump, which triggers the OPO-process. We time-resolve the polariton OPO signal emission for more than 1 nanosecond in both real and momentum-space. We fully characterize the emission of the OPO signal with spectral tomography techniques. Our interpretations are backed up by theoretical simulations based on the 2D coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equation for excitons and photons.