Inelastic Light Scattering in Microcavities

Abstract

A semiconductor microcavity is an optical resonator, where the mirrors consist of alternating layers of two different semiconductors with different refractive indices, e.g., GaAs and AlAs, which have thicknesses of a quarter wavelength each. The resonator itself is called spacer, and has a thickness of a few half wavelengths. The electric fields of the light waves, and hence the light–matter interaction can be modified significantly inside a microcavity. In the past decades, a number of sophisticated experiments have been reported that took advantage of the strongly enhanced electric field inside the spacer of a planar semiconductor microcavity. A prominent example is the enhanced exciton–photon coupling, resulting in an enlarged Rabi splitting, in planar microcavities containing undoped quantum wells [1]. Subsequently, a wealth of theoretical and experimental work on exciton polaritons in semiconductor microcavities, e.g., about the influence of a magnetic field [2], or coupling between different microcavities [3], followed.