Coexisting nonequilibrium condensates with long-range spatial coherence in semiconductor microcavities

Abstract

Real- and momentum-space spectrally resolved images of microcavity polariton emission in the regime of condensation are investigated under nonresonant excitation using a laser source with reduced intensity fluctuations on the time scale of the exciton lifetime. We observe that the polariton emission consists of many macroscopically occupied modes. Lower-energy modes are strongly localized by the spatial polaritonic potential disorder on a scale of a few microns. Higher-energy modes have finite $k$ vectors and are delocalized over $10--15\text{ }\ensuremath{\mu}\text{m}$. All the modes exhibit long-range spatial coherence comparable to their size. We provide a theoretical model describing the behavior of the system with the results of the simulations in good agreement with the experimental observations. We show that the multimode emission of the polariton condensate is a result of its nonequilibrium character, the interaction with the local polaritonic potential, and the reduced intensity fluctuations of the excitation laser.