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International Conference on Ultrafast Phenomena

Dynamics of Coherently Excited Semiconductor Microcavities

June‐Koo Kevin Rhee, Theodore B. Norris, Yasuhiko Arakawa, Masao Nishioka, Claude Weisbuch

Published Jan 1, 1994• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Recently, cavity quantum electrodynamic (QED) effects in semiconductor microcavities have been of considerable interest since, in the weak-coupling regime they play an important role in selectively increasing spontaneous emission into the lasing mode of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL’s) [1,2], enabling low-threshold, high speed, and high efficiency. In a strong-coupling regime, the normal modes of the coupled system are superpositions of the exciton and cavity modes. Hence the impulsively excited system will evolve in time with the energy oscillating between the exciton and cavity modes. This is known as a vacuum-Rabi oscillation (VRO), with a frequency of Ω=d¯⋅E¯/@@h, where d¯ is the transition dipole moment of atoms and E¯ the vacuum-field strength. Of course, VRO are observable only when the cavity lifetime and exciton dephasing time are long enough compared to VRO period. Recently, Weisbuch et al. [3] have reported an observation of the normal-mode vacuum Rabi splitting in 2-D-exciton/planar-DBR microcavities. The observed splittings were as large as 6 meV in reflection and transmission spectra, implying 690-fs vacuum Rabi oscillations.

DOI
10.1364/up.1994.tue.5

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Recently, cavity quantum electrodynamic (QED) effects in semiconductor microcavities have been of considerable interest since, in the weak-coupling regime they play an important role in selectively increasing spontaneous emission into the lasing mode of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL’s) [1,2], enabling low-threshold, high speed, and high efficiency. In a strong-coupling regime, the normal modes of the coupled system are superpositions of the exciton and cavity modes. Hence the impulsively excited system will evolve in time with the energy oscillating between the exciton and cavity modes. This is known as a vacuum-Rabi oscillation (VRO), with a frequency of Ω=d¯⋅E¯/@@h, where d¯ is the transition dipole moment of atoms and E¯ the vacuum-field strength. Of course, VRO are observable only when the cavity lifetime and exciton dephasing time are long enough compared to VRO period. Recently, Weisbuch et al. [3] have reported an observation of the normal-mode vacuum Rabi splitting in 2-D-exciton/planar-DBR microcavities. The observed splittings were as large as 6 meV in reflection and transmission spectra, implying 690-fs vacuum Rabi oscillations.
Recent progress in vertical surface-emitting-laser-diode technology has raised considerable interest in cavity-QED effects in high-quality vertical semiconductor microcavities. When an excitonic transition and a single cavity mode are strongly coupled, the normal modes of the system are coupled modes split by the vacuum-Rabi frequency, corresponding in the time domain to an oscillation of the excitation between modes of exciton and photon character. Recently, the vacuum-Rabi splitting and preliminary observations of time-domain oscillation in semiconductor quantum microcavities have been reported.1,2 In this paper we investigate rigorously the time-domain vacuum-Rabi oscillation by femtosecond upconversion and pump-probe techniques.
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).
Recently, several research groups have reported investigations of vacuum-field Rabi splittings (VRS) in the linear response of strongly coupled semiconductor microcavities [1-4]. We have previously reported on the dynamics of time-domain vacuum Rabi oscillations, which are most easily understood in the framework of cavity exciton-polaritons, in which the in-plane momentum k|| is conserved [2], so that at each k|| a single cavity mode interacts with only a single mode of the electromagnetic field (Jaynes-Cummings model). In high Q semiconductor microcavities, the strong coupling between two-dimensional excitons and planar distributed- Bragg-reflector cavity modes results in several-meV splittings observable in the reflectivity or absorption spectrum. In the low excitation regime, the VRS is independent of light intensity incident on the cavity, since the vacuum-Rabi frequency exceeds the externally-driven Rabi frequency (in which case the Jaynes-Cummings model is equivalent to the linear dispersion of the coupled exciton-cavity system). As the incident light intensity is increased, two different effects may be expected to contribute to the nonlinear response. First, as long as the excitonic absorption is equivalent to a two-level system, higher-lying states of the Jaynes-Cummings ladder might be observable. Second, at high intensity phase-space filling and Coulomb screening of the exciton states results in a reduced oscillator strength which leads to a reduced VRS; this effect has no analogue in the case of atom-cavity systems. In this paper, we apply several ultrafast nonlinear techniques to investigate the nonlinear response of semiconductor microcavities.
We have used femtosecond optical spectroscopy to observe directly the vacuum Rabi oscillations associated with the coupled exciton-photon mode splitting in a semiconductor quantum microcavity. When the microcavity is impulsively excited by a coherent short optical pulse, the time-resolved emission from the cavity shows beats corresponding to the oscillation between cavity and exciton modes, with a decay corresponding to approximately twice the cavity lifetime. Interferometric pump-probe measurements clearly show the coherent evolution of the cavity polarization.
We have used femtosecond optical spectroscopy to observe directly the vacuum Rabi oscillations associated with the coupled exciton-photon mode splitting in a semiconductor quantum microcavity. When the microcavity is impulsively excited by a coherent short optical pulse, the time-resolved emission from the cavity shows beats corresponding to the oscillation between cavity and exciton modes, with a decay corresponding to approximately twice the cavity lifetime. Interferometric pump-probe measurements clearly show the coherent evolution of the cavity polarization.
Summary form only given. Optical interactions in semiconductor microcavities embedded with quantum wells enter a nonperturbative regime when the dipole coupling rate between the exciton and the cavity mode exceeds relevant decay rates. In this regime, coherent energy exchange between the exciton and the cavity mode, i.e. normal mode oscillation (NMO), takes place when the cavity mode is excited impulsively by a short laser pulse. Similar coherent oscillations have also been observed in transient four-wave mixing (FWM) responses. In this paper, we present experimental and theoretical studies on the nature of oscillations in these transient FWM responses. We show that, in contrast to earlier beliefs, oscillations in time-integrated transient FWM do not correspond to NMO of the exciton or photon populations. Theoretical studies further reveal that FWM arising from different physical mechanisms including band filling, excitation-induced dephasing, and renormalized electric fields is characterized by highly distinct coherent dynamics. Oscillations in transient FWM reflect interference between these coherent optical processes and can be used as a unique probe for exciton many-body interactions in the nonperturbative regime.