Controlled Exciton-Photon Interaction in Semiconductor Bulk Microcavities

Abstract

We report the first experimental investigation of the spectral response of a "bulk microcavity": a semiconductor system in which the same cavity material is the active medium.Despite the smaller oscillator strength of the bulk exciton, a Rabi splitting even clearer than that displayed by usual quantum-well microcavities is observed. The splitting increases with the cavity layer thickness and the exciton dispersion produces a satellite structure due to quantum confinement. We also show that control of the exciton-photon interaction can be realized by suitably tailoring the photonic wave function. PACS numbers: '7]. 36.+c, 42.50.p, 71.35.+z, 73.20.Dx In the last few years, the study of quantum microcavities has fascinated many researchers, mainly because, by altering the photonic density of states, these structures allow the investigation of fundamental quantum electrodynamics and are ideal candidates for new optical devices. The first experiments were performed in the field of atomic physics [1],but presently a great interest has surged in the semiconductor world because solid-state cavities with Bragg reflectors as mirrors can now be produced by standard growing techniques such as molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) or met-

Comparison of strong coupling regimes in bulk GaAs, GaN, and ZnO semiconductor microcavities

“…The two other states, labeled MPB (middle polariton branch) and UPB, are very close in energy. They both contribute to the UPB identified in experimental results 15 , for which the homogeneous broadening is three times larger than the one used in our model. All polariton branches appear in the transmission spectrum ( Fig.4-d, g) and therefore constitute proper polariton states, even when the continuum is included in the calculation.…”

“…In GaAs microcavities the active layer is described by one exciton in its fundamental state 15 . But the problem is more intricate in wurtzite GaN or ZnO due to the valence band structure and the strong oscillator strengths.…”

Bose condensation of cavity polaritons beyond the linear regime: The thermal equilibrium of a model microcavity

“…2 In this example, wave-vector conservation ensures that each exciton is coupled only to a single mode of the electromagnetic field, leading to the formation of polaritons which are superpositions of a single exciton and photon. Recently, there has been a lot of interest in polaritons formed from photons confined in cavities: such cavity polaritons have now been observed for confined photons coupled to atoms, 3 to two-dimensional excitons in quantum wells, 4 to bulk excitons, 5 to excitons in films of organic semiconductors, 6,7 and to charged exciton complexes. 8 Since polaritons are photons coupled to other excitations, they are bosons, and so are candidates for Bose condensation.…”

Cavity-Enhanced Transport of Charge

“…PACS numbers: 05.60. Gg, 42.50.Pq, 74.40.Gh, The study of strong light-matter interactions [1][2][3][4] is playing an increasingly crucial role in understanding as well as engineering new states of matter with relevance to the fields of quantum optics [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18], solid state physics [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31], as well as quantum chemistry [32][33][34][35][36] and material science [37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][...…”