Kardar–Parisi–Zhang universality in a one-dimensional polariton condensate

Abstract

Revealing universal behaviours is a hallmark of statistical physics. Phenomena such as the stochastic growth of crystalline surfaces 1 and of interfaces in bacterial colonies 2, and spin transport in quantum magnets 3-6 all belong to the same universality class, despite the great plurality of physical mechanisms they involve at the microscopic level. More specifically, in all these systems, space-time correlations show power-law scalings characterized by universal critical exponents. This universality stems from a common underlying effective dynamics governed by the nonlinear stochastic Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation 7. Recent theoretical works have suggested that this dynamics also emerges in the phase of out-of-equilibrium systems showing macroscopic spontaneous coherence 8-17. Here we experimentally demonstrate that the evolution of the phase in a driven-dissipative one-dimensional polariton condensate falls in the KPZ universality class. Our demonstration relies on a direct measurement of KPZ space-time scaling laws 18,19, combined with a theoretical analysis that reveals other key signatures of this universality class. Our results highlight fundamental physical differences between out-of-equilibrium condensates and their equilibrium counterparts, and open a paradigm for exploring universal behaviours in driven open quantum systems.