An indirect exciton (IX), also known as an interlayer exciton, is a bound pair of an electron and a hole confined in spatially separated layers. Due to their long lifetimes, IXs can cool below the temperature of quantum degeneracy. This provides an opportunity to experimentally study cold composite bosons. This article overviews our studies of cold IXs, presenting spontaneous coherence and Bose–Einstein condensation of IXs and phenomena observed in the IX condensate, including the spatially ordered exciton state, commensurability effect of exciton density wave, spin textures, Pancharatnam–Berry phase, long-range coherent spin transport, and interference dislocations.
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Moiré pattern of interference dislocations in condensate of indirect excitons
Abstract Interference patterns provide direct measurement of coherent propagation of matter waves in quantum systems. Superfluidity in Bose–Einstein condensates of excitons can enable long-range ballistic exciton propagation and can lead to emerging long-scale interference patterns. Indirect excitons (IXs) are formed by electrons and holes in separated layers. The theory predicts that the reduced IX recombination enables IX superfluid propagation over macroscopic distances. Here, we present dislocation-like phase singularities in interference patterns produced by condensate of IXs. We analyze how exciton vortices and skyrmions should appear in the interference experiments and show that the observed interference dislocations are not associated with these phase defects. We show that the observed interference dislocations originate from the moiré effect in combined interference patterns of propagating condensate matter waves. The interference dislocations are formed by the IX matter waves ballistically propagating over macroscopic distances. The long-range ballistic IX propagation is the evidence for IX condensate superfluidity.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1905478
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10294061
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Nature Communications
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2041-1723
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21353-7
