Temperature dependence of the coherence in polariton condensates

We present a time-resolved experimental study of the temperature effect on the coherence of traveling polariton condensates. The simultaneous detection of their emission both in real- and reciprocal-space allows us to fully monitor the condensates’ dynamics. We obtain fringes in reciprocal-space as a result of the interference between polariton wavepackets (WPs) traveling with the same speed. The periodicity of these fringes is inversely proportional to the spatial distance between the interfering WPs. In a similar fashion, we obtain interference fringes in real-space when WPs traveling in opposite directions meet. The visibility of both real- and reciprocal-space interference fringes rapidly decreases with increasing temperature and vanishes. A theoretical description of the phase transition, considering the coexistence of condensed and non-condensed particles, for an out of equilibrium condensate such as ours is still missing. Yet a comparison with theories developed for atomic condensates allows us to infer a critical temperature for the BEC-like transition when the visibility goes to zero.