Laser operation and Bose-Einstein condensation: analogies and differences

Abstract

After reviewing the interpretation of laser operation as a non-equilibrium Bose-Einstein condensation phase transition, we illustrate the novel features arising from the non-equilibrium nature of photon and polariton Bose-Einstein condensates recently observed in experiments. We then proposea quantitative criterion to experimentally assess the equilibrium vs. non-equilibrium nature of a specific condensation process, based on fluctuation-dissipation relations. The power of this criterion is illustrated on two models which shows very different behaviours.

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Spatial dynamics, thermalization, and gain clamping in a photon condensate
• Towards strongly correlated photons in arrays of dissipative nonlinear cavities under a frequency-dependent incoherent pumping
• Grand-canonical condensate fluctuations in weakly interacting Bose-Einstein condensates of light
• Pseudo-thermalization in driven-dissipative non-Markovian open quantum systems