Soliton and shock waves in an exciton polariton quantum pond

Dispersive and dissipative effects together with their nonlinearity, are mainstream concepts determining the stationary and propagating features of many physical phenomena. We demonstrate for the first time the presence of shock waves and standing soliton formation in an exciton polariton condensate resonantly created in a semiconductor microcavity. This effect is of much interest due to the intrinsic, strong, non-linear effects of polariton particles which give rise to the formation of a long living soliton peak of a diffraction limited size.