Evidence for a Bose-Einstein condensate of excitons

We report compelling evidence for a “gray” condensate of dipolar excitons, electrically polarised in a 25 nm wide GaAs quantum well. The condensate is composed by a macroscopic population of dark excitons coherently coupled to a lower population of bright excitons. To create the exciton condensate we use an all-optical approach in order to produce microscopic traps which confine a dense exciton gas $(\sim 10^{10}\ \text{cm}^{-2})$ that yet exhibits an anomalously weak photoemission at sub-kelvin temperatures. This is the first fingerprint for the “gray” condensate. It is then confirmed by the macroscopic spatial coherence and the linear polarization of the weak excitonic photoluminescence emitted from the trap, as theoretically predicted