Erlangen 2018 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 37: Quantum Gases (Bosons) IV

Q 37.5: Talk

Tuesday, March 6, 2018, 15:00–15:15, K 2.020

Mode selection in a system of photons in a dye-filled microcavity — •Martina Vlaho, Daniel Vorberg, Alexander Leymann, and André Eckardt — Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany

We investigate the non-equilibrium steady state of a gas of photons in a dye-filled microcavity as it has been realized by the Weitz group. We consider the regime where the system is pumped away from the cavity center so that the pump spot predominantly overlaps spatially with excited transverse photon modes. We observe that when increasing the pump rate above a threshold, such an excited mode acquires a macroscopic occupation, i.e., becomes selected. Ramping up the pump rate further, we find that the ground mode can become selected for a given range of system parameters, resulting from an increased density of excited state molecules in the cavity center, once the excited mode gets selected. We also consider the case of a homogeneously pumped system where we observe a cascade of transitions between the selected modes. We find that a blocking mechanism between modes with a large spatial overlap effects which modes are selected before saturation takes place.