Turing patterns in semiconductor microcavity polaritons: theory and experiment

PosterWe study spontaneous formation of regular polariton patterns in quantum-well semiconductor microcavities for continuous-wave optical pumping. Our study is based on (i) fully two-dimensional simulations of the mean-field dynamics of the coupled cavity-field and exciton system, (ii) a simplified mode-competition model to systematically organize our results including various phase transitions, and (iii) experiments giving evidence for spontaneous hexagon formation in a coherent polariton system (cf. Fig.1). This combination allows to interpret our results both from a microscopic polariton-scattering perspective and from a more phenemenological (and general) nonlinear dynamical systems perspective. In addition to the results shown in Fig.1, we will discuss all-optical switching of polariton patterns triggered by an additional external control and relate this to transitions across phase boundaries in the simplified model. The exploration of this rich spectrum of instability behavior and phase transitions is of fundamental interest and will have implications for the development of all-optical low-intensity polariton switches [1]. [1] A. M. C. Dawes, D. J. Gauthier, S. Schumacher, N. H. Kwong, R. Binder, and A. L. Smirl, Transverse optical patterns for ultra-low-light-level all-optical switching, Laser & Photonics Reviews 4, 221 (2010)