ABSTRACT
In a standard semiconductor laser, electrons and holes recombine via stimulated emission to emit coherent light, in a process that is far from thermal equilibrium. Exciton-polariton condensates-sharing the same basic device structure as a semiconductor laser, consisting of quantum wells coupled to a microcavity-have been investigated primarily at densities far below the Mott density for signatures of Bose-Einstein condensation. At high densities approaching the Mott density, exciton-polariton condensates are generally thought to revert to a standard semiconductor laser, with the loss of strong coupling. Here, we report the observation of a photoluminescence sideband at high densities that cannot be accounted for by conventional semiconductor lasing. This also differs from an upper-polariton peak by the observation of the excitation power dependence in the peak-energy separation. Our interpretation as a persistent coherent electron-hole-photon coupling captures several features of this sideband, although a complete understanding of the experimental data is lacking. A full understanding of the observations should lead to a development in non-equilibrium many-body physics.
ABSTRACT
Incoherent pumping in quantum dots can create a biexciton state through two paths: via the formation of bright or dark exciton states. The latter, dark-pumping path is shown to enhance the probability of two-photon simultaneous emission and hence increase g((2))(0) by a factor â 1/γ(S), due to the slow spin relaxation rate γ(S) in quantum dots. The existence of the dark path is shown to impose a limitation on the single photon emission process, especially in nanocavities which exhibit a large exciton-cavity coupling and a Purcell enhancement for fast quantum telecommunications.
ABSTRACT
The mechanism of second thresholds observed in several experiments is theoretically revealed by studying the BEC-BCS-laser crossover in exciton-polariton systems. We find that there are two different types of second thresholds: one is a crossover within quasiequilibrium phases and the other is into nonequilibrium (lasing). In both cases, the light-induced band renormalization causes gaps in the conduction and valence bands, which indicates the existence of bound electron-hole pairs in contrast to earlier expectations. We also show that these two types can be distinguished by the gain spectra.
ABSTRACT
The ground state of a microcavity polariton Bose-Einstein condensate is determined by considering experimentally tunable parameters such as excitation density and detuning. During a change in the ground state of Bose-Einstein condensate from excitonic to photonic, which occurs as the excitation density is increased, the origin of the binding force of electron-hole pairs changes from Coulomb to photon-mediated interactions. The change in the origin gives rise to the strongly bound pairs with a small radius, like Frenkel excitons, in the photonic regime. The phase diagram obtained provides valuable information that can be used to build theoretical models for each regime.
