English

Photon thermalization and a condensation phase transition in an electrically pumped semiconductor microresonat

Optics 2020-07-09 v2

Abstract

We report on an experimental study of photon thermalization and condensation in a semiconductor microresonator in the weak-coupling regime. We measure the dispersion relation of light and the photon mass in a single-wavelength, broad-area resonator. The observed luminescence spectrum is compatible with a room-temperature, thermal-equilibrium distribution. A phase transition, identified by a saturation of the population at high energies and a superlinear increase of the occupation at low energy, takes place when the phase-space density is of order unity. We explain our observations by Bose-Einstein condensation of photons in equilibrium with a particle reservoir and discuss the relation with laser emission.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1912.11358,
  title  = {Photon thermalization and a condensation phase transition in an electrically pumped semiconductor microresonat},
  author = {S. Barland and P. Azam and G. L. Lippi and R. A. Nyman and R. Kaiser},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.11358},
  year   = {2020}
}