Dissipative soliton protocols in semiconductor microcavities at finite temperatures

Abstract

We consider exciton polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity with a saturable absorber in the growth direction of the heterostructure. This feature promotes additional nonlinear losses of the system with the emergence of bistability of the condensate particles number on the nonresonant (electrical or optical) excitation intensity. Furthermore, we demonstrate a new type of bright spatial dissipative exciton-polariton soliton which emerges in the equilibrium between the regions with different particle density. We develop protocols of soliton creation and destruction. The switch to a solitonlike behavior occurs if the cavity is exposed by a short strong laser pulse with certain energy and duration. We estimate the characteristic times of soliton switch on and off and the time of return to the initial cycle. In particular, we demonstrate surprising narrowing of the spatial profile of the soliton and its vanishing at certain temperature due to interaction of the system with the thermal bath of acoustic phonons. We also address the role of polariton-polariton interaction (Kerr-like nonlinearity) on formation of dissipative solitons and show that the soliton may exist both in its presence and its absence. © 2015 American Physical Society. Show more