Macroscopically ordered state in an exciton system

There is a rich variety of quantum liquids -- such as superconductors, liquid helium and atom Bose-Einstein condensates -- that exhibit macroscopic coherence in the form of ordered arrays of vortices. Experimental observation of a macroscopically ordered electronic state in semiconductors has, however, remained a challenging and relatively unexplored problem. A promising approach for the realization of such a state is to use excitons, bound pairs of electrons and holes that can form in semiconductor systems. At low densities, excitons are Bose-particles, and at low temperatures, of the order of a few kelvin, excitons can form a quantum liquid -- that is, a statistically degenerate Bose gas or even a Bose-Einstein condensate. Here we report photoluminescence measurements of a quasi-two-dimensional exciton gas in GaAs/AlGaAs coupled quantum wells and the observation of a macroscopically ordered exciton state. Our spatially resolved measurements reveal fragmentation of the ring-shaped emission pattern into circular structures that form periodic arrays over lengths up to 1 mm.     

均匀相互作用玻色气体的凝聚温度

最近人们已经在实验中实现了相互作用玻色气体的玻色－爱因斯坦凝聚,相互作用玻色气体的凝聚温度是玻色－爱因斯坦凝聚问题中一个重要的热力学量,运用鹰势方法和巨正则分布,作者对盒子中相互作用玻色气全的凝聚温度给预了详细考察,研究表明凝聚温度的移动为δTc/Tc=-2.9an^1/3,此处a和n分别为两粒子的S波散射长度和粒子精密度。     

Bose-Einstein condensation of excitons in bilayer electron systems

An exciton is the particle-like entity that forms when an electron is bound to a positively charged 'hole'. An ordered electronic state in which excitons condense into a single quantum state was proposed as a theoretical possibility many years ago. We review recent studies of semiconductor bilayer systems that provide clear evidence for this phenomenon and explain why exciton condensation in the quantum Hall regime, where these experiments were performed, is as likely to occur in electron-electron bilayers as in electron-hole bilayers. In current quantum Hall excitonic condensates, disorder induces mobile vortices that flow in response to a supercurrent and limit the extremely large bilayer counterflow conductivity.     

Bose-Einstein condensation of exciton polaritons

Phase transitions to quantum condensed phases--such as Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC), superfluidity, and superconductivity--have long fascinated scientists, as they bring pure quantum effects to a macroscopic scale. BEC has, for example, famously been demonstrated in dilute atom gas of rubidium atoms at temperatures below 200 nanokelvin. Much effort has been devoted to finding a solid-state system in which BEC can take place. Promising candidate systems are semiconductor microcavities, in which photons are confined and strongly coupled to electronic excitations, leading to the creation of exciton polaritons. These bosonic quasi-particles are 10(9) times lighter than rubidium atoms, thus theoretically permitting BEC to occur at standard cryogenic temperatures. Here we detail a comprehensive set of experiments giving compelling evidence for BEC of polaritons. Above a critical density, we observe massive occupation of the ground state developing from a polariton gas at thermal equilibrium at 19 K, an increase of temporal coherence, and the build-up of long-range spatial coherence and linear polarization, all of which indicate the spontaneous onset of a macroscopic quantum phase.     

Bose-Einstein condensation of photons in an optical microcavity

Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC)-the macroscopic ground-state accumulation of particles with integer spin (bosons) at low temperature and high density-has been observed in several physical systems, including cold atomic gases and solid-state quasiparticles. However, the most omnipresent Bose gas, blackbody radiation (radiation in thermal equilibrium with the cavity walls) does not show this phase transition. In such systems photons have a vanishing chemical potential, meaning that their number is not conserved when the temperature of the photon gas is varied; at low temperatures, photons disappear in the cavity walls instead of occupying the cavity ground state. Theoretical works have considered thermalization processes that conserve photon number (a prerequisite for BEC), involving Compton scattering with a gas of thermal electrons or photon-photon scattering in a nonlinear resonator configuration. Number-conserving thermalization was experimentally observed for a two-dimensional photon gas in a dye-filled optical microcavity, which acts as a 'white-wall' box. Here we report the observation of a Bose-Einstein condensate of photons in this system. The cavity mirrors provide both a confining potential and a non-vanishing effective photon mass, making the system formally equivalent to a two-dimensional gas of trapped, massive bosons. The photons thermalize to the temperature of the dye solution (room temperature) by multiple scattering with the dye molecules. Upon increasing the photon density, we observe the following BEC signatures: the photon energies have a Bose-Einstein distribution with a massively populated ground-state mode on top of a broad thermal wing; the phase transition occurs at the expected photon density and exhibits the predicted dependence on cavity geometry; and the ground-state mode emerges even for a spatially displaced pump spot. The prospects of the observed effects include studies of extremely weakly interacting low-dimensional Bose gases and new coherent ultraviolet sources.     

二维囚禁广义玻色气体的玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚

应用广义玻色-爱因斯坦分布函数研究在幂函数外势中二维广义玻色气体的玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚(BEC),导出二维广义玻色气体的临界温度、基态粒子占据率和热容量等物理量的解析表达式,讨论了非广延参数q对玻色系统热统计性质的影响.     

Spontaneous coherence in a cold exciton gas

If bosonic particles are cooled down below the temperature of quantum degeneracy, they can spontaneously form a coherent state in which individual matter waves synchronize and combine. Spontaneous coherence of matter waves forms the basis of a number of fundamental phenomena in physics, including superconductivity, superfluidity and Bose-Einstein condensation. Spontaneous coherence is the key characteristic of condensation in momentum space. Excitons--bound pairs of electrons and holes--form a model system to explore the quantum physics of cold bosons in solids. Cold exciton gases can be realized in a system of indirect excitons, which can cool down below the temperature of quantum degeneracy owing to their long lifetimes. Here we report measurements of spontaneous coherence in a gas of indirect excitons. We found that spontaneous coherence of excitons emerges in the region of the macroscopically ordered exciton state and in the region of vortices of linear polarization. The coherence length in these regions is much larger than in a classical gas, indicating a coherent state with a much narrower than classical exciton distribution in momentum space, characteristic of a condensate. A pattern of extended spontaneous coherence is correlated with a pattern of spontaneous polarization, revealing the properties of a multicomponent coherent state. We also observed phase singularities in the coherent exciton gas. All these phenomena emerge when the exciton gas is cooled below a few kelvin.     

玻色—爱因斯坦凝聚（BEC）现象的研究

玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚（BEC）的研究是当前物理学研究的一个新热点,国内外许多学者都开展了研究。为探讨有关BEC的普遍性质和规律以及影响BEC的主要物理因素,我们研究了任意空间维数下,处于任意幂函数型外势约束中具有不同运动特征的玻色气体和费米气体的性质。导出量子态密度、巨势及其它热力学函数的普遍解析表达式,提出赝体积和普遍热波长等新概念,首次求得有外势约束的玻色气体的态方程,并揭示了BEC的一些新性质和确立了有关BEC的两个新判据,同时还发现了No/N-T/Tc曲线必为凸型的新规律,等等。所得结果有助于深入了解BEC这种新物态的特性,并为实验选择最佳外势阱的形式及其它物理参数提供一些新的理论依据。此外还简要地介绍了国内外研究动态与进展以及本研究的前景。     

表面激子在磁场中的性质

本文采用微扰的方法讨论了极性晶体表面的激子在磁场中的性质。在忽略激子于反冲效应中发射的不同波矢的虚声子之间的相互作用的近似下,导出了表面激子的自陷能、电子-空穴间的有效作用势、重整化质量以及激子-声子-磁场三者之间的耦合能。我们发现表面激子的自陷能与晶体的电子-空穴质量比有关,但是对于任意的电子-空穴质量比,表面激子都是自陷的。我们还发现:由于表面声子对表面激子运动的影响,使得表面激子在磁场中的抗磁性能移有所减弱。并就磁场不存在时,和其它理论进行了比较,结果表明:我们的工作改进了其它理论。     

A GaAs polariton light-emitting diode operating near room temperature

The increasing ability to control light-matter interactions at the nanometre scale has improved the performance of semiconductor lasers in the past decade. The ultimate optimization is realized in semiconductor microcavities, in which strong coupling between quantum-well excitons and cavity photons gives rise to hybrid half-light/half-matter polariton quasiparticles. The unique properties of polaritons-such as stimulated scattering, parametric amplification, lasing, condensation and superfluidity-are believed to provide the basis for a new generation of polariton emitters and semiconductor lasers. Until now, polariton lasing and nonlinearities have only been demonstrated in optical experiments, which have shown the potential to reduce lasing thresholds by two orders of magnitude compared to conventional semiconductor lasers. Here we report an experimental realization of an electrically pumped semiconductor polariton light-emitting device, which emits directly from polariton states at a temperature of 235 K. Polariton electroluminescence data reveal characteristic anticrossing between exciton and cavity modes, a clear signature of the strong coupling regime. These findings represent a substantial step towards the realization of ultra-efficient polaritonic devices with unprecedented characteristics.     

Ultrafast terahertz probes of transient conducting and insulating phases in an electron-hole gas

Many-body systems in nature exhibit complexity and self-organization arising from seemingly simple laws. For example, the long-range Coulomb interaction between electrical charges has a simple form, yet is responsible for a plethora of bound states in matter, ranging from the hydrogen atom to complex biochemical structures. Semiconductors form an ideal laboratory for studying many-body interactions of electronic quasiparticles among themselves and with lattice vibrations and light. Oppositely charged electron and hole quasiparticles can coexist in an ionized but correlated plasma, or form bound hydrogen-like pairs called excitons. The pathways between such states, however, remain elusive in near-visible optical experiments that detect a subset of excitons with vanishing centre-of-mass momenta. In contrast, transitions between internal exciton levels, which occur in the far-infrared at terahertz (1012 s(-1)) frequencies, are independent of this restriction, suggesting their use as a probe of electron-hole pair dynamics. Here we employ an ultrafast terahertz probe to investigate directly the dynamical interplay of optically-generated excitons and unbound electron-hole pairs in GaAs quantum wells. Our observations reveal an unexpected quasi-instantaneous excitonic enhancement, the formation of insulating excitons on a 100-ps timescale, and the conditions under which excitonic populations prevail.     

Experimental observation of electron-hole recollisions

An intense laser field can remove an electron from an atom or molecule and pull the electron into a large-amplitude oscillation in which it repeatedly collides with the charged core it left behind. Such recollisions result in the emission of very energetic photons by means of high-order-harmonic generation, which has been observed in atomic and molecular gases as well as in a bulk crystal. An exciton is an atom-like excitation of a solid in which an electron that is excited from the valence band is bound by the Coulomb interaction to the hole it left behind. It has been predicted that recollisions between electrons and holes in excitons will result in a new phenomenon: high-order-sideband generation. In this process, excitons are created by a weak near-infrared laser of frequency f(NIR). An intense laser field at a much lower frequency, f(THz), then removes the electron from the exciton and causes it to recollide with the resulting hole. New emission is predicted to occur as sidebands of frequency f(NIR)?+?2nf(THz), where n is an integer that can be much greater than one. Here we report the observation of high-order-sideband generation in semiconductor quantum wells. Sidebands are observed up to eighteenth order (+18f(THz), or n = 9). The intensity of the high-order sidebands decays only weakly with increasing sideband order, confirming the non-perturbative nature of the effect. Sidebands are strongest for linearly polarized terahertz radiation and vanish when the terahertz radiation is circularly polarized. Beyond their fundamental scientific significance, our results suggest a new mechanism for the ultrafast modulation of light, which has potential applications in terabit-rate optical communications.     

Long-range transport in excitonic dark states in coupled quantum wells

During the past ten years, coupled quantum wells have emerged as a promising system for experiments on Bose condensation of excitons, with numerous theoretical and experimental studies aimed at the demonstration of this effect. One of the issues driving these studies is the possibility of long-range coherent transport of excitons. Excitons in quantum wells typically diffuse only a few micrometres from the spot where they are generated by a laser pulse; their diffusion is limited by their lifetime (typically a few nanoseconds) and by scattering due to disorder in the well structure. Here we report photoluminescence measurements of InGaAs quantum wells and the observation of an effect by which luminescence from excitons appears hundreds of micrometres away from the laser excitation spot. This luminescence appears as a ring around the laser spot; almost none appears in the region between the laser spot and the ring. This implies that the excitons must travel in a dark state until they reach some critical distance, at which they collectively revert to luminescing states. It is unclear whether this effect is related to macroscopic coherence caused by Bose condensation of excitons.     

n维理想玻色气体的内能和热容量

给出了Ｔ〉Ｔｃ和Ｔ〈ＴＣ情况下不同能谱的ｎ维简交理想玻色气体的内能及热容量的普遍表达式，应用于三维极端相对论理想玻色气体时则在Ｔ－ＴＣ处热容量ＣＶ出现跃变，这与通常玻色气体的ＣＶ在ＴＣ处连续的结果不同。     

玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚体量子模拟实验技术进展

玻色爱因斯坦凝聚体（BEC）的最初理论在1925年由爱因斯坦和玻色提出,直到1994年才通过激光冷却原子气体的方法在实验室实现,并于2001年获得诺贝尔物理学奖。BEC具有宏观量子特性并且具有较长的相干时间,因此是开展量子模拟研究的重要平台。随着光阱、光晶格、微结构光阱和量子气体显微镜等技术的发展,基于BEC的量子模拟器不仅能够用于研究凝聚态物理中已有的基本模型,而且能够探索自然界中不存在的新奇量子物理现象和量子物态。甚至在非平衡和动力学演化研究方面,BEC量子模拟器可以用来研究当前物理实验中无法观测的快速量子物理现象。     

简谈理想玻色原子气体的BEC

本文描述了理想玻色气体的玻色一爱因斯坦凝聚（BEC）现象,讨论生成BEC现象的临界温度条件,从量子统计解释了BEC现象．对三维体系,指出了当分子间的平均距离火于分子热运动的德波罗意波长是就能产生BEC现象．从讨论BEC态的热容量可知当温度低于临界温度时,正常态的热容量产生突变即存在相变．     

Quantum nature of a strongly coupled single quantum dot-cavity system

Cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) studies the interaction between a quantum emitter and a single radiation-field mode. When an atom is strongly coupled to a cavity mode, it is possible to realize important quantum information processing tasks, such as controlled coherent coupling and entanglement of distinguishable quantum systems. Realizing these tasks in the solid state is clearly desirable, and coupling semiconductor self-assembled quantum dots to monolithic optical cavities is a promising route to this end. However, validating the efficacy of quantum dots in quantum information applications requires confirmation of the quantum nature of the quantum-dot-cavity system in the strong-coupling regime. Here we find such confirmation by observing quantum correlations in photoluminescence from a photonic crystal nanocavity interacting with one, and only one, quantum dot located precisely at the cavity electric field maximum. When off-resonance, photon emission from the cavity mode and quantum-dot excitons is anticorrelated at the level of single quanta, proving that the mode is driven solely by the quantum dot despite an energy mismatch between cavity and excitons. When tuned to resonance, the exciton and cavity enter the strong-coupling regime of cavity QED and the quantum-dot exciton lifetime reduces by a factor of 145. The generated photon stream becomes antibunched, proving that the strongly coupled exciton/photon system is in the quantum regime. Our observations unequivocally show that quantum information tasks are achievable in solid-state cavity QED.     

偶极激子的静电俘获

考虑设计偶极间接激子的2维静电俘获.可以看到,与由于陷阱几何增加的平面电场结合的激子偶极-偶极相互作用约束所俘获的最大密度和寿命.导出这些值的解析估算,并确定它们与陷阱几何的关系,提出观察激子的Bose-Einstein凝聚方法中的高密度陷俘的最佳设计.     

Hybridization of electronic states in quantum dots through photon emission

The self-assembly of semiconductor quantum dots has opened up new opportunities in photonics. Quantum dots are usually described as 'artificial atoms', because electron and hole confinement gives rise to discrete energy levels. This picture can be justified from the shell structure observed as a quantum dot is filled either with excitons (bound electron-hole pairs) or with electrons. The discrete energy levels have been most spectacularly exploited in single photon sources that use a single quantum dot as emitter. At low temperatures, the artificial atom picture is strengthened by the long coherence times of excitons in quantum dots, motivating the application of quantum dots in quantum optics and quantum information processing. In this context, excitons in quantum dots have already been manipulated coherently. We show here that quantum dots can also possess electronic states that go far beyond the artificial atom model. These states are a coherent hybridization of localized quantum dot states and extended continuum states: they have no analogue in atomic physics. The states are generated by the emission of a photon from a quantum dot. We show how a new version of the Anderson model that describes interactions between localized and extended states can account for the observed hybridization.     

简谐势阱中弱相互作用玻色气体的临界温度及基态粒子占据率

应用局域密度近似法（LDA）对简谐势约束下的非理想玻色气体发生玻色－爱因斯坦凝聚（BEC）时的临界温度作出计算，进而讨论了弱相互作用对临界温度及基态粒子占据率的影响。这些研究将有助于对BEC这种新物态性质的进一步了解。