Cavity polariton condensate in a disordered environment

We report on the influence of disorder on an exciton-polariton condensate in a ZnO-based bulk planar microcavity and compare experimental results with a theoretical model for a nonequilibrium condensate. Experimentally, we detect intensity fluctuations within the far-field emission pattern even at high condensate densities, which indicates a significant impact of disorder. We show that these effects rely on the driven dissipative nature of the condensate and argue that they can be accounted for by spatial phase inhomogeneities induced by disorder, which occur even for increasing condensate densities realized in the regime of high excitation power. Thus, nonequilibrium effects strongly suppress the stabilization of the condensate against disorder, contrary to what is expected for equilibrium condensates in the high-density limit. Numerical simulations based on our theoretical model reproduce the experimental data.