Quantum vortex formation in the "rotating bucket" experiment with polariton condensates: Utilising all-optical non-resonant GHz stirring we induce quantum vortices in non-linear superfluids of light.
Quantum vortex formation in the "rotating bucket" experiment with polariton condensates: Utilising all-optical non-resonant GHz stirring we induce quantum vortices in non-linear superfluids of light.
The appearance of quantized vortices in the classical “rotating bucket” experiments of liquid helium and ultracold dilute gases provides the means for fundamental and comparative studies of different superfluids. Here, we realize the rotating bucket experiment for optically trapped quantum fluid of light based on exciton-polariton Bose-Einstein condensate in semiconductor microcavity. We use the beating note of two frequency-stabilized single-mode lasers to generate an asymmetric time-periodic rotating, nonresonant excitation profile that both injects and stirs the condensate through its interaction with a background exciton reservoir. The pump-induced external rotation of the condensate results in the appearance of a corotating quantized vortex. We investigate the rotation frequency dependence and reveal the range of stirring frequencies (from 1 to 4 GHz) that favors quantized vortex formation. We describe the phenomenology using the generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation. Our results enable the study of polariton superfluidity on a par with other superfluids, as well as deterministic, all-optical control over structured nonlinear light.
Gnusov, Ivan
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Harrison, Stella
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Alyatkin, Sergey
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Sitnik, Kirill
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Toepfer, Julian Dominic
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Sigurdsson, Helgi
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Lagoudakis, Pavlos
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25 January 2023
Gnusov, Ivan
de198571-0a88-4517-a683-058aed03766d
Harrison, Stella
534bfaa4-a993-462e-b833-150f3efc13c0
Alyatkin, Sergey
485bddd5-8eb7-4045-911b-86b0d401bdd4
Sitnik, Kirill
0da3b614-7c4f-4681-9e8c-ba6e51339ce5
Toepfer, Julian Dominic
f3e89749-2912-4907-b712-6052b732dfb1
Sigurdsson, Helgi
c6380293-fe97-4fd0-a819-cf35721d4e5d
Lagoudakis, Pavlos
ea50c228-f006-4edf-8459-60015d961bbf
Gnusov, Ivan, Harrison, Stella, Alyatkin, Sergey, Sitnik, Kirill, Toepfer, Julian Dominic, Sigurdsson, Helgi and Lagoudakis, Pavlos
(2023)
Quantum vortex formation in the "rotating bucket" experiment with polariton condensates: Utilising all-optical non-resonant GHz stirring we induce quantum vortices in non-linear superfluids of light.
Science Advances, 9 (4), [eadd1299].
(doi:10.1126/sciadv.add1299).
Abstract
The appearance of quantized vortices in the classical “rotating bucket” experiments of liquid helium and ultracold dilute gases provides the means for fundamental and comparative studies of different superfluids. Here, we realize the rotating bucket experiment for optically trapped quantum fluid of light based on exciton-polariton Bose-Einstein condensate in semiconductor microcavity. We use the beating note of two frequency-stabilized single-mode lasers to generate an asymmetric time-periodic rotating, nonresonant excitation profile that both injects and stirs the condensate through its interaction with a background exciton reservoir. The pump-induced external rotation of the condensate results in the appearance of a corotating quantized vortex. We investigate the rotation frequency dependence and reveal the range of stirring frequencies (from 1 to 4 GHz) that favors quantized vortex formation. We describe the phenomenology using the generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation. Our results enable the study of polariton superfluidity on a par with other superfluids, as well as deterministic, all-optical control over structured nonlinear light.
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sciadv.add1299 (1)
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Accepted/In Press date: 28 December 2022
e-pub ahead of print date: 25 January 2023
Published date: 25 January 2023
Additional Information:
Funding: We acknowledge the support of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program, through a FET Open research and innovation action under the grant agreement nos. 899141 (PoLLoC) and 964770 (TopoLight) and United Kingdom’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant no. EP/M025330/1 on Hybrid Polaritonics). S.A. and P.L. acknowledge the financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research grant no. 20-52-12026. H.S. acknowledges the Icelandic Research Fund (Rannis), grant no. 217631-051. S.H. acknowledges the use of the IRIDIS High Performance Computing Facility and the associated support services at the University of Southampton.
Author contributions: I.G., S.A., and K.S. performed the experiments and analyzed the data. J.T. developed the software for the data acquisition. S.H. and H.S. developed the theory and carried out numerical simulations. I.G. and P.L. designed the experiment. P.L. supervised the project. All the authors participated in the writing of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. All data supporting this study are openly available from the University of Southampton repository (56).
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 473705
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/473705
ISSN: 2375-2548
PURE UUID: 6159b229-476e-467d-9570-523a9608bc9d
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Date deposited: 27 Jan 2023 17:54
Last modified: 11 Nov 2024 20:45
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Contributors
Author:
Ivan Gnusov
Author:
Sergey Alyatkin
Author:
Kirill Sitnik
Author:
Julian Dominic Toepfer
Author:
Pavlos Lagoudakis
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