Transition from propagating polariton solitons to a standing wave condensate induced by interactions

We explore phase transitions of polariton wave packets, first, to a soliton and then to a standing wave polariton condensate in a multimode microwire system, mediated by nonlinear polariton interactions. At low excitation density, we observe ballistic propagation of the multimode polariton wave packets arising from the interference between different transverse modes. With increasing excitation density, the wave packets transform into single-mode bright solitons due to effects of both intermodal and intramodal polariton-polariton scattering. Further increase of the excitation density increases thermalization speed, leading to relaxation of the polariton density from a solitonic spectrum distribution in momentum space down to low momenta, with the resultant formation of a nonequilibrium condensate manifested by a standing wave pattern across the whole sample.