Optical bistability and spatial dispersion in exciton-polariton systems (A)

P. I. Khadzhi, G. K. Shibarshina, A. Kh. Rotaru

Dror Sarid, Nasser N. Peyghambarian, Brian P. McGinnis

We calculate the response of a Fabry-Perot etalon containing a nonlinear excitonic medium in the presence of spatial dispersion. The nonlinearity is taken to be that of the polariton density-dependent collision broadening of the exciton resonance. The effect of spatial dispersion on optical bistability in reflection is investigated theoretically in a CdSe etalon with a high-reflectivity back mirror.

Ye. Larionova, W. Stolz, Carl O. Weiss

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.

Eiichi Hanamura

Moira L. Steyn‐Ross, Crispin W. Gardiner

Nguyen Ba An

The present article shortly reviews some recent results in the study of excitonic nonlinearity in optically excited media using a nonboson treatment for many-exciton systems. After a brief discussion of the exciton nonbosonity the closed commutation relations are given for exciton operators which hold for any exciton density and type. The nonboson treatment is then applied to the problems of intrinsic optical bistability and nonlinear polariton yielding quite interesting and new effects, e.g. new shapes of hysteresis loops of intrinsic optical bistability or anomalies of polariton dispersion.