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Semiconductor microcavities are used to support freely flowing polariton quantum liquids allowing the direct observation and optical manipulation of macroscopic quantum states. Incoherent optical excitation at a point produces radially expanding condensate clouds within the planar geometry. By using arbitrary configurations of multiple pump spots, we discover a geometrically controlled phase transition, switching from the coherent phase-locking of multiple condensates to the formation of a single trapped condensate. The condensation threshold becomes strongly dependent on the programmed superfluid geometry and sensitive to cooperative interactions between condensates. We directly image persistently circulating superfluid and show how flows of light-matter quasiparticles are dominated by the quantum pressure in such configurable laser-written potential landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on the direct observation of biexcitons in a Ill-nitride based multiple quantum well microcavity operating in the strong light-matter coupling regime by means of nonresonant continuous wave and time-resolved photoluminescence at low temperature. First, the biexciton dynamics is investigated for the bare active medium (multiple quantum wells alone) evidencing localization on potential fluctuations due to alloy disorder and thermalization between both localized and free excitonic and biexcitonic populations. Then, the role of biexcitons is considered for the full microcavity: in particular, we observe that for specific detunings the bottom of the lower polariton branch is directly fed by the radiative dissociation of either cavity biexcitons or excitons mediated by one LO-phonon. Accordingly, minimum polariton lasing thresholds are observed, when the bottom of the lower polariton branch corresponds in energy to the exciton or cavity biexciton first LO-phonon replica. This singular observation highlights the role of excitonic molecules in the polariton condensate formation process as being a more efficient relaxation channel when compared to the usually assumed acoustical phonon emission one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Periodic incorporation of quantum wells inside a one-dimensional Bragg structure is shown to enhance coherent coupling of excitons to the electromagnetic Bloch waves. We demonstrate strong coupling of quantum well excitons to photonic crystal Bragg modes at the edge of the photonic band gap, which gives rise to mixed Bragg polariton eigenstates. The resulting Bragg polariton branches are in good agreement with the theory and allow demonstration of Bragg polariton parametric amplification.

We observe the buildup of strong (approximately 50%) spontaneous vector polarization in emission from a GaN-based polariton laser excited by short optical pulses at room temperature. The Stokes vector of emitted light changes its orientation randomly from one excitation pulse to another, so that the time-integrated polarization remains zero. This behavior is completely different from any previous laser. We interpret this observation in terms of the spontaneous symmetry breaking in a Bose-Einstein condensate of exciton polaritons.

We observe a room-temperature low-threshold transition to a coherent polariton state in bulk GaN microcavities in the strong-coupling regime. Nonresonant pulsed optical pumping produces rapid thermalization and yields a clear emission threshold of 1 mW, corresponding to an absorbed energy density of 29 microJ cm-2, 1 order of magnitude smaller than the best optically pumped (In,Ga)N quantum-well surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs). Angular and spectrally resolved luminescence show that the polariton emission is beamed in the normal direction with an angular width of +/-5 degrees and spatial size around 5 microm.