Bose-Einstein Condensation of Light in a Semiconductor Quantum Well Microcavity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates Bose-Einstein condensation of photons in an inorganic semiconductor microcavity, highlighting its advantages over other BEC systems and exploring the physics of interacting photon condensates.

Contribution

It provides the first clear evidence of photon BEC in an inorganic semiconductor microcavity and discusses its potential for studying quantum fluid phenomena.

Findings

Photon BEC observed in semiconductor microcavity

Interaction parameter measured as $ ilde{g}=0.0023\

Photon BEC offers lower thresholds and continuous operation compared to exciton BECs.

Abstract

When particles with integer spin accumulate at low temperature and high density they undergo Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). Atoms, solid-state excitons and excitons coupled to light all exhibit BEC, which results in high coherence due to massive occupation of the respective system's ground state. Surprisingly, photons were shown to exhibit BEC much more recently in organic dye-filled optical microcavities, which, owing to the photon's low mass, occurs at room temperature. Here we demonstrate that photons within an inorganic semiconductor microcavity also thermalise and undergo BEC. Although semiconductor lasers are understood to operate out of thermal equilibrium, we identify a region of good thermalisation in our system where we can clearly distinguish laser action from BEC. Based on well-developed technology, semiconductor microcavities are a robust system for exploring the physics and applications of quantum statistical photon condensates. Notably, photon BEC is an alternative to exciton-based BECs, which dissociate under high excitation and often require cryogenic operating conditions. In practical terms, photon BECs offer their critical behaviour at lower thresholds than lasers. Our study shows two further advantages of photon BEC in semiconductor materials: the lack of dark electronic states allows these BECs to be sustained continuously; and semiconductor quantum wells offer strong photon-photon scattering. We measure an unoptimised interaction parameter, $\tilde{g}=0.0023\pm0.0003$, which is large enough to access the rich physics of interactions within BECs, such as superfluid light or vortex formation.