Spontaneous microcavity-polariton coherence across the parametric threshold: Quantum Monte Carlo studies

Iacopo Carusotto (1) , Cristiano Ciuti (2)

1 BEC-INFM and Dipartimento di Fisica
2 LPA - Laboratoire Pierre Aigrain

We investigate the appearance of spontaneous coherence in the parametric emission from planar semiconductor microcavities in the strong coupling regime. Calculations are performed by means of a Quantum Monte Carlo technique based on the Wigner representation of the coupled exciton and cavity-photon fields. The numerical results are interpreted in terms of a non-equilibrium phase transition occurring at the parametric oscillation threshold: below the threshold, the signal emission is incoherent, and both the first and the second-order coherence functions have a finite correlation length which becomes macroscopic as the threshold is approached. Above the threshold, the emission is instead phase-coherent over the whole two-dimensional sample and intensity fluctuations are suppressed. Similar calculations for quasi-one-dimensional microcavities show that in this case the phase-coherence of the signal emission has a finite extension even above the threshold, while intensity fluctuations are suppressed.

Domaines: Autre [cond-mat.other]

Iacopo Carusotto, Cristiano Ciuti. Spontaneous microcavity-polariton coherence across the parametric threshold: Quantum Monte Carlo studies. Physical Review B: Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (1998-2015), 2005, 72, pp.125335. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevB.72.125335⟩. ⟨hal-00004775⟩