Determination of polariton condensates' critical temperature

E. Rozas, M. D. Martín, C. Tejedor, L. Viña, G. Deligeorgis, Z. Hatzopoulos, P. G. Savvidis

Published 2019-02-12Version 1

We investigate the thermal robustness of traveling polariton condensates. We create remote condensates that have never been in contact, and study their interference in momentum space, when they travel with the same velocity, by means of time-resolved photoluminescence. We determine the condensed to thermal, uncondensed polariton fraction, which shows a gradual decay with increasing temperature, and obtain the critical temperature for the Bose-Einstein-like condensate (BEC) phase transition. We tentatively compare our experimental findings with theoretical models, developed for atomic condensates, to describe the condensates' coherence fading with temperature.