Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality in a one-dimensional polariton condensate
Anna Minguzzi
LPMMC, CNRS and Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France
Anna Minguzzi is an Italian condensed matter physicist who works in France as a director of research for the French National Centre for Scientific Research, affiliated with the Laboratoire de Physique et Modélisation des Milieux Condensés (LPMMC) in Grenoble. Her research involves quantum fluids, gases of ultracold atoms, fermionic condensates, Bose–Einstein condensatesLP, exciton- polaritons, and atomtronics. She studied physics at the
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, where she earned her Ph.D. in 1999. She continued to work at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, in the Istituto nazionale per la fisica della materia, until moving to her present position at CNRS in 2005. There, she directed the Laboratoire de Physique et Modélisation des Milieux Condensés from 2014 to 2020, headed the condensed matter division of the Société Française de Physique, led the Quantum Grenoble project, and founded the QuantAlps Research Federation, quantum computing collaborations centered at Grenoble Alpes University. She was the 2018 winner of the Louis Ancel Prize of the Société Française de Physique. She received the CNRS Silver Medal in 2023.
Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality in a one-dimensional polariton condensate
Revealing universal behaviors is a hallmark of statistical physics. Phenomena such as the stochastic growth of crystalline surfaces, of interfaces in bacterial colonies and spin transport in quantum magnets all belong to the same universality class, despite the great plurality of physical mechanisms they involve at the microscopic level. This universality stems from a common underlying effective dynamics governed by the non-linear stochastic Kardar-Parisi- Zhang (KPZ) equation. Recent theoretical works suggest that this dynamics also emerges in the phase of excitons polaritons, out-of-equilibrium systems displaying macroscopic spontaneous coherence. I will report on our common theory-experimental work demonstrating that the evolution of the phase in a driven-dissipative one-dimensional polariton condensate falls in the KPZ universality class. Our result relies on the measurement of KPZ space-time scaling laws, combined with a theoretical analysis that
reveals other key signatures of this universality class as the probability distribution. Our study highlights fundamental physical differences between out-of-equilibrium condensates and their equilibrium counterparts, and open a paradigm for exploring universal behaviors in driven open systems.
Reference: Q. Fontaine et al, Nature 608, 687–691 (2022)
Practical informations
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