Figure 1

Pump and heating laser spots together with their arrival times on the ridge. Ridge temperature calibration. (a) Ridge formed by plasma etching of a planar microcavity structure. Polariton condensate created by the pump laser (red spot) propagates towards the end of the ridge. A second heating laser (532 nm) is used near the edge (green spot) to raise the temperature of the ridge, the spot size is comparable to the ridge size to ensure uniform heating. The duration of the excitation and heating lasers are, respectively. The heating laser is turned off while interference measurements are taken to avoid any effect due to spurious carriers creation. (b) For establishing direct relation between heating laser power and ridge temperature, lower polariton energy shifts are recorded by changing the heat laser power (bottom axis) and by varying cryostat temperature (top axis).