Abuzarli Murad, Cherroret Nicolas, Bienaimé Tom, Glorieux Quentin
Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Sorbonne University, CNRS, ENS-PSL University, Collège de France, 4 Place Jussieu, 75005 Paris, France.
CESQ and ISIS (UMR 7006), University of Strasbourg and CNRS, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
Phys Rev Lett. 2022 Sep 2;129(10):100602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.100602.
We report on the observation of a prethermal state in a nonequilibrium, two-dimensional fluid of light. Direct measurements of the first order coherence function of the fluid reveal the dynamical emergence of algebraic correlations, a quasi-steady-state with properties close to those of thermal superfluids. By a controlled increase of the fluctuations, we observe a crossover from algebraic to short-range (exponential) correlations. We interpret this phenomenon as a nonequilibrium precursor of the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition.
