Abstract
Macroscopic order appears as the collective behaviour of many interacting particles. Prime examples are superfluidity in helium1, atomic Bose–Einstein condensation2, s-wave3 and d -wave superconductivity4 and metal–insulator transitions5. Such physical properties are tightly linked to spin and charge degrees of freedom and are greatly enriched by orbital structures6. Moreover, high-orbital states of bosons exhibit exotic orders distinct from the orders with real-valued bosonic ground states7. Recently, a wide range of related phenomena have been studied using atom condensates in optical lattices8,9,10, but the experimental observation of high-orbital orders has been limited to momentum space11,12. Here we establish microcavity exciton–polariton condensates as a promising alternative for exploring high-orbital orders. We observe the formation of d -orbital condensates on a square lattice and characterize their coherence properties in terms of population distributions both in real and momentum space.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge Special Coordination Funds for Promoting Science and Technology in Japan, Navy/SPAWAR Grant N66001-09-1-2024, MEXT, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) through its Funding Program for World-Leading Innovative R&D on Science and Technology (FIRST Program), and State of Bavaria. C.W. is supported by the NSF under grant no. DMR-0804775.
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Y.Y. and N.Y.K. conceived this study. A.L. and S.H. grew the wafer. K.K processed the device. N.Y.K. built an optical set-up, and N.Y.K., K.K. and N.M. carried out experiments. N.Y.K. and Y.Y. analysed experimental data and C.W. carried out band-structure calculations. N.Y.K. and Y.Y. wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.
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Kim, N., Kusudo, K., Wu, C. et al. Dynamical d-wave condensation of exciton–polaritons in a two-dimensional square-lattice potential. Nature Phys 7, 681–686 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2012
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2012
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