Experimental Evidence for Inhomogeneous-Pumping and Energy-Dependent Effects in Photon Bose-Einstein Condensation

Abstract

Light thermalised at room temperature in an optically pumped, dye-filled microcavity resembles a model system of non-interacting Bose-Einstein condensation in the presence of dissipation. We have experimentally investigated some of the steady-state properties of this unusual state of light and found features which do not match the available theoretical descriptions. We have seen that the critical pump power for condensation depends on the pump beam geometry, being lower for smaller pump beams. Far below threshold, both intracavity photon number and thermalised photon cloud size depend on pump beam size, with optimal coupling when pump beam matches the thermalised cloud size. We also note that the critical pump power for condensation depends on the cavity cutoff wavelength and longitudinal mode number, which suggests that energy-dependent thermalisation and loss mechanisms are important.

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Cited by in corpus (11)

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• Thermally Condensing Photons into a Coherently Split State of Light
• First-order spatial coherence measurements in a thermalized two-dimensional photonic quantum gas
• Thermo-optical interactions in a dye-microcavity photon Bose-Einstein condensate
• Realizing arbitrary trapping potentials for light via direct laser writing of mirror surface profiles
• Phase-space views into dye-microcavity thermalised and condensed photons
• Polarization dynamics in a photon BEC
• Polarization of a Bose-Einstein Condensate of Photons in a Dye-Filled Microcavity
• Rubidium spectroscopy at high-pressure buffer gas conditions: detailed balance in the optical interaction of an absorber coupled to a reservoir
• Absorption spectroscopy of xenon and ethylene-noble gas mixtures at high pressure: Towards Bose-Einstein condensation of vacuum ultraviolet photons