Scientific Achievement
We predict that there is a critical point analogous to liquid-gas coexistence in the phase diagram of a dynamically driven condensate of light and matter.
Significance and Impact
Our theory explains why polariton condensates—coherent superpositions of light and electron-hole pairs—show two thresholds for the onset of coherence, either discontinuous or continuous, and identifies possible coexistence at a unique exceptional point.
Research Details
- We use both microscopic theory and a generalized dynamical model of a two-component condensate to demonstrate that condensation can generically occur separately in both the “in-phase” and “out-of- phase” components of a non-equilibrium system.
- The existence of a degeneracy at an exceptional point is likely to be a generic feature of two-component driven condensates.
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