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Optics Express

Dark solitons in semiconductor resonators

Ye. Larionova, Carl O. Weiss, O. A. Egorov

Published Jan 1, 2005• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The properties of dark spatial solitons in a quantum well semiconductor resonator are investigated experimentally and by model calculations. We find experimentally and confirm theoretically that the solitons show local light amplification. The amount of amplification as well as its parameter dependence changes with the character of the nonlinearity (absorptive, dispersive, mixed). Theoretically a new ring-shaped dark soliton is found to exist.

DOI
10.1364/opex.13.008308

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The properties of dark spatial solitons in a quantum well semiconductor resonator are investigated experimentally and by model calculations. We find experimentally and confirm theoretically that the solitons show local light amplification. The amount of amplification as well as its parameter dependence changes with the character of the nonlinearity (absorptive, dispersive, mixed). Theoretically a new ring-shaped dark soliton is found to exist.
Optical bistability and bright and dark resonator solitons exist in semiconductor resonator at room temperature [C.O. Weis and Ye. Larionova, Rep. Prog. Phys. 70 (2007) 255-335], with the usual semiconductor nonlinearity. At low temperature in the strong coupling regime between quantum well excitons and the optical field in a semiconductor microcavity the nonlinearities are strong and based on “polariton nonlinearity”. The strong coupling results in a quasi-particle “exciton-polariton” which gives access to positive and negative reactive and dissipative optical nonlinearities, as opposed to the usual room temperature semiconductor nonlinearities possessing essentially only one sign. The type of nonlinearity and the properties of solitons can be varied widely by the detuning between the photon- and exciton resonances. We show for the first time experimentally the existence of patterns, bright and dark solitons based on polariton nonlinearity. 1. INTRODUCTION Bright and dark spatial solitons were shown to exist in such microresonators with and without population inversion [1-3]. At room temperature the nonlinearity which is at the origin of the soliton existence is the usual mixed absorptive/refractive semiconductor nonlinearity which can have transverse effects (e.g. self-focusing) and longitudinal effects such as nonlinear resonance, both ingredients for soliton stability. At low temperature (or at large exciton binding energies) the exciton, which merges with the absorption band at room temperature, is well separated spectrally from the absorption band so that the nonlinearity becomes that of a 2-level system. If the exciton resonance is strongly coupled with the field inside a resonator the exciton- and the photon resonances mix. At coincidence of the two resonance frequencies, the photon- and the exciton resonances hybridize in an avoided crossing and the two hybrid resonances are ascribed to a quasi-particle, the excitonpolariton. This quasi-particle has unusual optical properties. E.g. is the photon nonlinearity determined by exciton collisions. That the exciton-polariton system has interesting nonlinearities (e.g. induced absorption as opposed to the usual saturable absorption) has been shown previously [4]. It was realized that semiconductor microresonators in the strong field-exciton coupling regime might show optical bistability and first experimental proofs for bistability were given recently [5]. As optical bistability of a resonator is a precondition for the existence of spatial resonator solitons, the question arises whether semiconductor microresonators with polariton nonlinearity can support spatial resonator solitons, which, as a consequence of the large nonlinearity of the polaritons, could be expected to exist at rather small light intensities, as it is of importance for all applications. 2. EXPERIMENTAL ARRANGEMENT AND RESULTS The cooled resonator sample (4 K) is illuminated by light at the polariton resonance wavelengths, and the light reflected from the resonator is observed. The light source is a Ar
Bright and dark spatial solitons are observed in an optically pumped semiconductor resonator. The pumping allows us to reduce considerably the light intensity necessary for the existence of the solitons and alleviates thermal load problems. Experiments are found to agree qualitatively with calculations based on a simple large-aperture semiconductor resonator model. The role of the signs of the absorptive and reactive nonlinearities in soliton existence is discussed in relation to the nonlinear resonance effect, the tilted-wave mechanism of pattern formation, and the sign of the population inversion.
We show experimentally optical bistability and the existence of bright and dark resonator solitons in the strong coupling regime between quantum-well excitons and the optical field in a semiconductor microcavity. The strong coupling results in a quasi-particle exciton-polariton, which gives access to positive and negative reactive and dissipative optical nonlinearities, as opposed to the usual room temperature semiconductor nonlinearities possessing essentially only one sign. The existence range and the properties of solitons can be varied widely by the detuning between polariton states and light frequency.
In this paper, we investigate the interaction between the semiconductor quantum well (QW) structure, a weak probe field and a strong control field. Due to the quantum interference effect induced by the strong control field, the absorption of the weak probe field is small and the Kerr nonlinearity can be greatly enhanced. The results show that the spatial soliton can form in the semiconductor QW structure via electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). We also discuss the optical response of the system and obtain the giant χ (3) and χ (5) susceptibilities with opposite signs. In the one-dimension case, we obtain the analytical solutions for bright and dark spatial solitons. For a general case, we present numerical solutions for ring solitons with experimental parameters and show that the ring solitons are stable against azimuthal perturbation.