Microcavity Polaritons: nonequilibrium quantum condensation in dissipative environment

When?

Friday 25 May 2012, 13:00

Where?

02ATI02

Open to:

Staff, Students

Speaker:

Dr Marzena Szymanska, Department of Physics, University of Warwick

By confining photons in a semiconductor microcavity, and strongly coupling them to electronic excitations, one may create polaritons:bosonic quasi-particles with an effective mass of 10-9 times that of Rubidium atoms, thus allowing BEC and superfluidity at elevated temperatures. Since the first realisation of polariton condensate in 2006 microcavities have been extensively used to explore a variety of out of equilibrium quantum collective phenomena: BCS-BEC, BEC-BKT and laser-condensate crossovers, phase transitions in non-equilibrium dissipative systems with decoherence and structural disorder, superfluidity and topological defects. I will discuss some of the most recent and exciting developments in this rapidly growing field.