Exciton polaritons are composite quasiparticles formed by strong interaction between excitons and photons in semiconductor microcavities. As composite Bosons with a low effective mass they condense at relatively high temperatures - as high as room temperature -  and have emerged as a promising candidate for designing novel optoelectronic devices due to their hybrid light-matter nature.

In contrast to atomic BECs, polariton BECs experience loss and gain as they decay through leakage of light from the microcavity, and are therefore an inherently non-Hermitian system.  Non-Hermiticity has been harnessed in optical and other systems to yield effects such as loss-induced transparency, gain-induced suppression of lasing, and sensitive switching.

However the non-Hermitian nature of polariton condensates has been largely overlooked until recently. In this talk we review the fundamentals of exciton polariton condensates and present recent theoretical work to guide experiments demonstrating non-Hermitian effects in polariton condensates.