Metrics details Polaritons are strongly interacting light–matter quasiparticles that occur naturally in semiconductor microcavities in the strong-coupling regime and constitute an interesting example of composite bosons we report the observation of spontaneous formation of pinned quantized vortices in the Bose-condensed phase of a polariton fluid Theoretical insight into the possible origin of such vortices is presented in terms of a generalized Gross–Pitaevskii equation Whereas the observation of quantized vortices is not sufficient for establishing the superfluid nature of the non-equilibrium polariton condensate it suggests parallels between our system and conventional superfluids Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout Quantized Vortices in Helium II (Cambridge Univ Bose–Einstein condensation of exciton polaritons Room-temperature polariton lasing in semiconductor microcavities Bose–Einstein condensation of microcavity polaritons in a trap Polariton laser using single micropillar GaAs–GaAlAs semiconductor cavities Vortices in trapped dilute Bose–Einstein condensate Vortex formation in a stirred Bose–Einstein condensate Observation of vortex phase singularities in Bose–Einstein condensates Thermal activation of vortex–antivortex pairs in quasi-two-dimensional Bose–Einstein condensates Semiclassical field method for the equilibrium Bose gas and application to thermal vortices in two dimensions Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless crossover in a trapped atomic gas Vortex proliferation in the Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless regime on a two-dimensional lattice of Bose–Einstein condensates Experimental evidence for nonequilibrium Bose condensation of exciton polaritons Synchronized and desynchronized phases of exciton-polariton condensates in the presence of disorder Optical properties of microcavity polaritons Optical vortices crystals: Spontaneous generation in nonlinear semiconductor microcavities Formation of optical vortex lattices in solid-state microchip lasers: Spontaneous transverse mode locking Detection of vorticity in Bose–Einstein condensed gases by matter-wave interference Fringe pattern of interfering Bose–Einstein condensates with a vortex Observation of interference between two Bose condensates Spontaneous rotating vortex lattices in a pumped decaying condensate Spatial and spectral shape of inhomogeneous non-equilibrium exciton-polariton condensates Excitations in a nonequilibrium Bose–Einstein condensate of exciton polaritons Wouters, M. & Carusotto, I. Excitations and superfluidity in non-equilibrium Bose–Einstein condensates of exciton-polaritons. Preprint at <http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1446> (2007) Microscopic measurement of photon echo formation in groups of individual excitonic transitions Nonequilibrium quantum condensation in an incoherently pumped dissipative system Download references The work was supported by the Swiss National Research Foundation through ‘NCCR Quantum Photonics’ Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne(EPFL) Reprints and permissions Download citation Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: a shareable link is not currently available for this article Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science