Controlling Spontaneous Emission of Semiconductor Microcavities
Abstract
A comprehensive study, culminating in a Reviews of Modern Physics article, was made of semiconductor microcavities exhibiting vacuum-field Rabi splitting, i.e., nonperturbative coupling between the quantum-well exciton absorption resonance and the single optical mode of the cavity. A large number of samples were grown by MBE with various mirror reflectivities and number of quantum wells. Exhaustive measurements were made of linear and nonlinear transmission and reflectively, and photoluminescence using cw and femtosecond lasers as a function of detuning. Samples were grown with record splitting-to-linewidth ratios. A new nonlinear behavior, namely loss of transmission with little change in splitting, was demonstrated and found to arise from excitation-induced dephasing that occurs at lower carrier densities than loss of oscillator strength. A dramatic crossover of the upper and lower branch photoluminescence intensities was shown to occur at the transition from nonperturbative to weak coupling, disproving the claim that it was an exciton polariton laser or boser. Reflectivity linewidths of the coupled system were found to be quantitatively understandable by measuring the quantum-well susceptibility and using it in a transfer matrix computation of the propagation through the cavity, disproving claims that disorder within the quantum wells has to be treated on an equal footing with propagation.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 30, 1999
- Accession Number
- ADA368694
Entities
People
- Galina Khitrova
Organizations
- University of Arizona