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Physical Review B

Optical bistability and laserlike emission in a semiconductor microcavity

Lucia Cavigli, Massimo Gurioli

Published Jan 13, 2005• 10 citations
Publisher

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.71.035317

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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.
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)
We report an experimental study of the optical bistability in a semiconductor microcavity (MC), consisting of a wedged λ GaAs spacer containing a single 8.5 nm In 0.04 Ga 0.96 As quantum well (QW). Increasing the excitation power, a transition between the normal coupling and the weak coupling regime of the MC modes is observed. At intermediate excitation power the reflectivity spectrum shows the simultaneous presence of three resonances, with a third peak spectrally lying between the two normal modes. Monitoring the reflected signal for different laser energy as a function of the excitation power, we found that optical bistability is observed only at the energy of the third peak. The experimental findings do not agree with transfer matrix calculations based on exciton bleaching, suggesting that more complex nonlinear mechanisms are relevant in the observed bistable behaviour.
Summary form only given. The nonlinear optical response of semiconductor microcavities in the nonperturbative regime has been the subject of many recent experiments. Contrary to clear demonstrations of the quantized nature of the vacuum-field Rabi splitting of a single atom, most of the experiments on semi-conductor microcavities could be explained in terms of a classical light field. Only recently, quantized light field effects have been reported in a coherent control experiment (Lee et al, 1999) and theoretically investigated in secondary emission (Kira et al, 1999). Here, results are presented that display a pronounced third transmission maximum lying energetically between the two normal modes. The third peak can be observed in resonant femtosecond single-beam as well as picosecond pump-probe experiments under various excitation conditions.
We report, the first time to our knowledge, an observation of optical bistability in a Vertical-Cavity Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (VCSOA) operated in reflection mode. Counterclockwise hysteresis loops are obtained over a range of initial phase detuning and bias currents. One hysteresis loop is observed experimentally with an input power as low as 2 ìW when the device is biased at 98% of its lasing threshold. We also numerically simulate the optical bistability and obtain good agreement with our experimental observations. Bistable VCSOAs significantly advances the prospect of dense 2-D array of low switching-intensity all-optical logic and memory elements.