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Applied Physics Letters

Demonstration of confined optical field effect in a vertical microcavity by examining the low temperature photon-exciton interaction in two kinds of quantum wells

Z. L. Zhang, Masao Nishioka, Claude Weisbuch, Yasuhiko Arakawa

Published Feb 28, 1994• 20 citations

Abstract

We report new results on a photon-exciton interaction in a λ cavity having two kinds of quantum wells (QWs) with the thickness of 62 and 90 Å which are sited at the antinode and two nodes of the standing wave, respectively. By measuring the reflectivity spectrum of the quantum microcavity, mode splitting (two dips) is observed when the photons in the cavity are resonant with the excitons of 62 Å QWs at 14 K. However, no mode splitting (one dip) is observed when the microcavity is tuned to the quantized energy of the excitons arising from the 90 Å QWs. The reason is the difference of the coupled interaction between photons and excitons due to the standing wave distribution of the optical field in the microcavity. The above results clearly demonstrate the controllability of quantum electrodynamics effects due to the confined optical mode (i.e., the standing wave) in a high-Q microcavity.

DOI: 10.1063/1.110934

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We report new results on a photon-exciton interaction in a λ cavity having two kinds of quantum wells (QWs) with the thickness of 62 and 90 Å which are sited at the antinode and two nodes of the standing wave, respectively. By measuring the reflectivity spectrum of the quantum microcavity, mode splitting (two dips) is observed when the photons in the cavity are resonant with the excitons of 62 Å QWs at 14 K. However, no mode splitting (one dip) is observed when the microcavity is tuned to the quantized energy of the excitons arising from the 90 Å QWs. The reason is the difference of the coupled interaction between photons and excitons due to the standing wave distribution of the optical field in the microcavity. The above results clearly demonstrate the controllability of quantum electrodynamics effects due to the confined optical mode (i.e., the standing wave) in a high-Q microcavity.

The spectral response of a monolithic semiconductor quantum microcavity with quantum wells as the active medium displays mode splitting when the quantum wells and the optical cavity are in resonance. This effect can be seen as the Rabi vacuum-field splitting of the quantum-well excitons, or more classically as the normal-mode splitting of coupled oscillators, the excitons, and the electromagnetic field of the microcavity. An exciton oscillator strength of 4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}

{10}^{12}

${\mathrm{cm}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}2}$ is deduced for 76-\AA{} quantum wells.

Semiconductor quantum microcavities are interesting physical systems in which fundamental interactions between light and excitons can be explored. For example, in the weak - coupling limit, modified excitonic spontaneous emission can be observed. In the strong-coupling limit, the cavity field modes and the quantum well exciton modes become coupled; the normal modes of the system are "cavity-polaritons" [1,2]. For in-plane wavevectors k// near zero, the normal modes are split by the dipole coupling between the excitons and the cavity vacuum field. This splitting is often referred to as a vacuum-Rabi splitting (VRS), as it has the same physical origin as the VRS observed in the interactions of atoms with single-mode cavities. The physical system in this work consists of a λ planar microcavity formed by two distributed-Bragg reflectors, with five GaAs quantum wells situated in the center of the cavity. In all the experiments described here, the exciton and cavity modes are on resonance (the low-field VRS is 6 meV for this sample).

Temperature and electric-field tuning of the vacuum Rabi splitting of the coupled exciton-photon state in a semiconductor microcavity is reported. A very good fit to the coupling of the heavy- and light-hole excitons to the cavity photon mode, as a function of temperature, is obtained from a theoretical model for the reflectivity spectra. In addition, the variation of Rabi splitting with an applied electric field is well accounted for by the calculated variation of exciton oscillator strength with the electric field. Electro-optic control of the vacuum Rabi splitting is demonstrated.

Summary form only given. The optical coherent control of quantum mechanical systems enables the direct manipulation of quantum states, and has been demonstrated on excitonic transitions in semiconductors. We have demonstrated the coherent control of the nonlinear optical response of quantum-well excitons in a resonant high-Q microcavity. There are two significant advantages to using excitons in microcavities instead of bare quantum wells: first, the multiple reflections which occur in the cavity strongly enhance the optical nonlinearity, enabling large-signal coherent control, and second, 2-color coherent control may be implemented, where a pump pulse tuned to one of the normal modes of the coupled exciton-microcavity system can control the response of a probe tuned to the other normal mode. The nonlinear response of the normal modes is due to the nonlinearity of the underlying exciton transition.

Low-temperature time-resolved luminescence experiments with 3-ps resolution have been performed on quantum-well excitons embedded in a nonguiding half-wave microcavity that displays the exciton-photon mode splitting. The spontaneous-emission dynamics of each of the two split components was studied as a function of the exciton-cavity detuning under resonant optical excitation. The spontaneous-emission decay rate is significantly modified with respect to the cavityless situation and its detuning dependence is accounted for by the strong radiative coupling between the radiant exciton states and the cavity photon modes. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.