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An electron hole is the absence of an electron in an otherwise filled band, described as a mobile positive-charge excitation. It can form a bound state with an electron, giving an exciton.

An exciton is a bound state of an electron and an electron hole. Coupling this material excitation strongly to a photon can form a polariton.

An exciton-polariton condensate has coherent macroscopic occupation of an exciton–photon hybrid mode. Finite photon lifetime makes it an open system: pumping a noncondensed reservoir can replenish condensate losses. A condensate equation coupled to a reservoir-rate equation describes gain saturation, interaction shifts and reservoir feedback; it need not possess a conserved Hamiltonian.

Let $n=|\Psi {|}^2$. Two independent approximations are required for the reservoir reduction of a polariton condensate. First the exciton reservoir must follow the changing condensate number density rapidly: after its initial transient, its relaxation time $[{\gamma }_R+R_{R}n{]}^{-1}$ must be small compared with the local density-evolution time. A sufficient modewise condition is that the relevant number density frequencies and growth rates are much smaller than ${\gamma }_R+R_{R}n$; pump variations must be comparably slow. There is no reservoir diffusion in the given model. Adiabatic elimination then givesSecond, to obtain the particular cubic equation by expansion about the empty condensate, require $\epsilon =R_{R}n/{\gamma }_R\ll 1$. ThenKeeping the full denominator instead gives a saturable-gain equation, not exactly the requested cubic complex Ginzburg–Landau equation. A near-threshold condensate is one natural regime in which the second condition holds. Rapid reservoir relaxation alone does not justify this number density expansion.

Multiplying the condensate equation by $-i$ and inserting the expanded reservoir separates real gain from the conservative frequency shift:These are local functions if the pump is spatially varying. Their signs are important: the reservoir blueshift gives negative $s$ in the printed convention $+is\Psi$, while reservoir depletion subtracts from the effective interaction $g$. Positive rates and pump give $\beta >0$; the effective $g$ need not be positive merely because the original interactions are repulsive.

A polariton is a hybrid light–matter excitation formed by strong coupling between a photon and a material excitation. For an exciton-polariton, the material component is an exciton.

A quasiparticle is a collective excitation that can be described approximately by particle-like quantum numbers and dynamics, even though it is not an isolated elementary particle. Excitons and polaritons are examples.