Room-temperature superfluidity of exciton-polaritons

Two decades ago, R.Y. Chiao highlighted the analogy between the Gross-Pitaevskii equation describing weakly interacting Bose fluids and the nonlinear wave equation describing photons in a nonlinear cavity. One dramatic consequence of this correspondance is the possibility to obtain a superfluid state of light. Microcavity polaritons--quasiparticles that can behave as strongly interacting photons--are an ideal platform to observe such effects. We will describe our observations of superfluid polariton propagation at room-temperature in organic microcavities and efforts to find other material systems where similar effects can be observed at much lower powers.