August 19, 2013 – August 23, 2013

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Location

ICTP, Trieste, Italy

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Photo Credits: Wikipedia.com, biogeochemistry.uml.edu, lpno.tnw.utwente.nl, lehigh.edu

 

Workshop Website:

Advanced Workshop on Non-equilibrium Bosons: From Driven Condensates to Non-Linear Optics

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Flyer:

Advanced Workshop on Nonequilibrium Bosons Flyer

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Organizers

Boris Altshuler, Columbia University
Mikhail Kiselev, ICTP
Atac Imamoglu, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
Vladimir Yudson, Russian Academy of Sciences 
Alexei Kavokin, University of Southampton
S. Flach, Massey University

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Overview

Recent progress in nano-engineering stimulated broadening studies of a new kind of cooperative phenomena in condensed matter systems: exciton-polariton Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) in microcavity semiconductor devices. As experimental implementation, these systems have some advantages as compared to ultra-cold gases: the effects of interest take place at temperatures of 0.1-1 K scale in contrast to nano-Kelvin scale for atomic BEC. The condensation kinetics (thermalization, vortex dynamics and the superfluid motion) can be accessed by optical methods. The bosons forming exciton-polariton condensates are not at thermodynamic equilibrium: because of the finite polariton life time, stationary states with macroscopic numbers of polaritons should be supported by an outside pumping. Being driven, the exciton-polariton condensates differ significantly from the conventional BEC-systems. A rich variety of phenomena in exciton-polariton systems includes polarization and interference effects, possible co-existence and interaction of different BEC phases of non-trivial topology, optical analogies of Josephson effect, effects of disorder, possible lasing and other non-linear optical phenomena in the specific microcavity configuration. A circle of problems to study is a synthesis of ones traditional for modern condensed matter physics and non-linear optics.

 

The goal of this Advanced Interdisciplinary Workshop is to bring together leading experimentalists and theorists working in the field of condensed matter physics, strong light-matter interaction and non-linear physics to foster a “cross-fertilization” between these three communities.