Quest for Vortices in Photon Condensates

TL;DR

This paper predicts that photon condensates in dye-filled microcavities can form long-lived, phase-coherent vortex-like structures with discrete rotational symmetry, controlled by the pump's orbital frequency, despite lacking photon-photon interactions.

Contribution

It introduces the prediction of vortex-like spatial structures in photon condensates driven by incoherent pumping, highlighting phase coherence without photon-photon interactions.

Findings

Photon condensates can form vortex-like structures.

These structures exhibit discrete rotational symmetry.

The symmetry is controlled by the pump's orbital frequency.

Abstract

We predict that a photon condensate inside a dye-filled microcavity forms long-lived spatial structures that resemble vortices when incoherently excited by a focused pump orbiting around the cavity axis. The finely structured density of the condensates have a discrete rotational symmetry that is controlled by the orbital frequency of the pump spot and is phase-coherent over its full spatial extent despite the absence of any effective photon-photon interactions.