Interaction between an Impurity and Nonlinear Excitations in a Polariton Condensate

Abstract

Exploring the dynamics of a mobile impurity immersed in field excitations is challenging, as it requires to account for the entanglement between the impurity and the surrounding excitations. To this end, the impurity’s effective mass has to be considered as finite, rather than infinite. Here, we theoretically investigate the interaction between a finite-mass impurity and a dissipative soliton representing nonlinear excitations in the polariton Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC). Using the Lagrange variational method and the open-dissipative Gross–Pitaevskii equation, we analytically derive the interaction phase diagram between the impurity and a dissipative bright soliton in the polariton BEC. Depending on the impurity mass, we find the dissipative soliton colliding with the impurity can transmit through, get trapped, or be reflected. This work opens a new perspective in understanding the impurity dynamics when immersed in field excitations, as well as potential applications in information processing with polariton solitons.