Excited states of exciton-polariton condensates in 2D and 1D harmonic traps

Abstract

We present a theoretical description of Bogolyubov-type excitations of exciton-polariton Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in semiconductor microcavities. For a typical two-dimensional (2D) BEC we focus on two limiting cases, the weak- and strong-coupling regimes, where a perturbation theory and the Thomas-Fermi approximation, respectively, are valid. We calculate integrated scattering intensity spectra for probing the collective excitations of the condensate in both considered limits. Moreover, in relation to recent experiments on optical modulation allowing localization of condensates in a trap with well-controlled shape and dimensions, we study the quasi-one-dimensional (1D) motion of the BEC in microwires and report the corresponding Bogolyubov excitation spectrum. We show that in the 1D case the characteristic polariton-polariton interaction constant is expressed as g 1 = 3 λ N / ( 2 L y ) ( λ is the 2D polariton-polariton interaction parameter in the cavity, N the number of the particles, and L y the wire cavity width). We reveal some interesting features for 2D and 1D Bogolyubov spectra for both repulsive ( λ > 0 ) and attractive ( λ < 0 ) interactions.