We predict the spontaneous symmetry breaking in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate of exciton-polaritons (polaritons) caused by the coupling of its spin and orbital degrees of freedom. We study a polariton condensate trapped in a ring-shaped effective potential with a broken rotational symmetry. We propose a realistic scheme of generating controllable spinor azimuthal persistent currents of polaritons in the trap under the continuous wave optical pump. We propose a new type of half-quantum circulating states in a spinor system characterized by azimuthal currents in both circular polarizations and a vortex in only one of the polarizations. The spontaneous symmetry breaking in the spinor polariton condensate that consists in the switching from co-winding to opposite-winding currents in opposite spin states is revealed. It is characterized by the change of the average orbital angular momentum of the condensate from zero to non-zero values. The radial displacement of the pump spot and the polarization of the pump act as the control parameters. The considered system exhibits a fundamental similarity to a superconducting flux qubit, which makes it highly promising for applications in quantum computing.
© 2021. The Author(s).