Impact of the Energetic Landscape on Polariton Condensates' Propagation along a Coupler

Abstract

Polariton condensates' propagation is strongly dependent on the particular energy landscape the particles are moving upon, in which the geometry of the pathway laid for their movement plays a crucial role. Bends in the circuit's trajectories affect the condensates' speed and oblique geometries introduce an additional discretization of the polaritons' momenta due to the mixing of short and long axis wavevectors on the propagating eigenvalues. In this work, the nature of the propagation of condensates along the arms of a polariton coupler is studied by a combination of time-resolved micro-tomography measurements and a theoretical model based on a mean field approximation where condensed polaritons are described by an equation for the slow varying amplitude of the polariton field coupled to an equation for the density of incoherent excitons.