Spontaneous giant vortices and circular supercurrents in a trapped exciton–polariton condensate

Abstract

We theoretically study an exciton–polariton condensate trapped in a harmonic potential with an annular pump. With a circular pump, predictions were made for a spontaneous rotating vortex lattice packed by singly quantized vortices. If the circular pump is replaced by an annular pump, singly quantized vortices are absorbed into the central hole and form a multiply quantized vortex. For a sufficiently narrow annular width, all vortices are absorbed into the central hole, ultimately forming a giant vortex with supersonic circular supercurrents flowing around it. Vortex–antivortex pairs can be generated if a defect is present in these supersonic circular supercurrents. We further discover that the motion of the vortex–antivortex pairs depends on the position at which they were generated. We suggest that this property can be used to control whether the velocity of the circular supercurrents is above or below the sound velocity.