Hydrodynamics and two-dimensional dark lump solitons for polariton superfluids

Abstract

We study a two-dimensional incoherently pumped exciton-polariton condensate described by an open-dissipative Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the polariton dynamics coupled to a rate equation for the exciton density. Adopting a hydrodynamic approach, we use multiscale expansion methods to derive several models appearing in the context of shallow water waves with viscosity. In particular, we derive a Boussinesq/Benney-Luke–type equation and its far-field expansion in terms of Kadomtsev-Petviashvili-I (KP-I) equations for right- and left-going waves. From the KP-I model, we predict the existence of vorticity-free, weakly (algebraically) localized two-dimensional dark-lump solitons. We find that, in the presence of dissipation, dark lumps exhibit a lifetime three times larger than that of planar dark solitons. Direct numerical simulations show that dark lumps do exist, and their dissipative dynamics is well captured by our analytical approximation. It is also shown that lumplike and vortexlike structures can spontaneously be formed as a result of the transverse “snaking” instability of dark soliton stripes.