Symmetry-Breaking Effects for Polariton Condensates in Double-Well Potentials

We study the existence, stability, and dynamics of symmetric and anti-symmetric states of quasi-one-dimensional polariton condensates in doublewell potentials, in the presence of nonresonant pumping and nonlinear damping. Some prototypical features of the system, such as the bifurcation of asymmetric solutions, are similar to the Hamiltonian analog of the double-well system considered in the realm of atomic condensates. Nevertheless, there are also some nontrivial differences including, e.g., the unstable nature of both the parent and the daughter branch emerging in the relevant pitchfork bifurcation for slightly larger values of atom numbers. Another interesting feature that does not appear in the atomic condensate case is that the bifurcation for attractive interactions is slightly sub-critical instead of supercritical. These conclusions of the bifurcation analysis A. S. Rodrigues Departamento de Física/CFP, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, R. Campo Alegre, 687, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal P. G. Kevrekidis Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003-4515, USA J. Cuevas Grupo de Física No Lineal, Departamento de Física Aplicada I, Escuela Politécnica Superior, Universidad de Sevilla, C/ Virgen de África, 7, 41011 Sevilla, Spain R. Carretero-González (&) Nonlinear Dynamical Systems Group, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Computational Science Research Center, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182-7720, USA e-mail: [email protected] URL: http://nlds.sdsu.edu D. J. Frantzeskakis Department of Physics, University of Athens, Panepistimiopolis, Zografos, 157 84 Athens, Greece Progress Optical Sci., Photonics (2013): 509–529 DOI: 10.1007/10091_2012_13 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 Published Online: 28 July 2012 are corroborated by direct numerical simulations examining the dynamics of the system in the unstable regime.