Spontaneous and triggered vortices in polariton OPO superfluids

Abstract: We study non-equilibrium polariton superfluids in the optical parametric oscillator (OPO) regime using a two-component Gross-Pitaevskii equation with pumping and decay. We identify a regime above OPO threshold, where the system undergoes spontaneous symmetry breaking and is unstable towards vortex formation without any driving rotation. Stable vortex solutions differ from metastable ones; the latter can persist in OPO superfluids but can only be triggered externally. Both spontaneous and triggered vortices are characterised by a generalised healing length, specified by the OPO parameters only.