Optical bistability in semiconductor microcavities (8 pages)

Chuanyi Zhang, Weifeng Zhang

David A. B. Miller

A. Baas, Jean‐Philippe Karr, Hichem Eleuch +1 more

We report the observation of polaritonic bistability in semiconductor microcavities in the strong-coupling regime. The origin of bistability is the polariton-polariton interaction, which gives rise to a Kerr-like nonlinearity. The experimental results are in good agreement with a simple model taking transverse effects into account.

Chi C. Sung, C. M. Bowden

Lucia Cavigli, Massimo Gurioli

We report the experimental observation of hysteresis in the optical response of a semiconductor microcavity under normal mode coupling regime. A third resonance mode, spectrally lying at the bare cavity mode frequency, suddenly appears in the reflectivity and resonant Rayleigh scattering spectra when increasing the excitation power, resulting in a coexistence of three resonance modes. Bistability loops in both microcavity optical response are found at the energy of this third mode. Associated to the bistability, laserlike emission occurs at the bare cavity mode.

Massimo Gurioli, Lucia Cavigli, G. Khitrova +1 more

Optical bistability in a semiconductor microcavity showing normal mode coupling regime is observed by means of reflectivity and resonant Rayleigh scattering experiments. A third resonance, spectrally lying between the two normal modes, suddenly appears in the optical response when increasing the excitation power. Hysteresis loops are found when monitoring the microcavity optical response at the energy of the third peak. Our experimental findings can not be accounted for simply by exciton bleaching. We conclude that other non-linear mechanisms are relevant in explaining the presence of the third peak and the observed bistable behaviour. (© 2004 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)