Temperature dependence of the coherence in polariton condensates

We present a time-resolved experimental study of the temperature effect on the coherence of traveling polariton condensates. The simultaneous detection of their emission both in real and reciprocal space allows us to fully monitor the condensates' dynamics. We obtain fringes in reciprocal space as a result of the interference between polariton wave packets (WPs) traveling with the same speed. The periodicity of these fringes is inversely proportional to the spatial distance between the interfering WPs. In a similar fashion, we obtain interference fringes in real space when WPs traveling in opposite directions meet. The visibility of both real- and reciprocal-space interference fringes rapidly decreases with increasing temperature and vanishes. A theoretical description of the phase transition, considering the coexistence of condensed and noncondensed particles, for an out-of-equilibrium condensate such as ours is still missing, yet a comparison with theories developed for atomic condensates allows us to infer a critical temperature for the BEC-like transition when the visibility goes to zero