Influence of exciton-exciton correlations on the polarization characteristics of polariton amplification in semiconductor microcavities

Abstract

Based on a microscopic many-particle theory we investigate the influence of excitonic correlations on the vectorial polarization state characteristics of the parametric amplification of polaritons in semiconductor microcavities. We study a microcavity with perfect in-plane isotropy. A linear stability analysis of the cavity polariton dynamics shows that in the co-linear (TE-TE or TM-TM) pump-probe polarization state configuration, excitonic correlations diminish the parametric scattering process whereas it is enhanced by excitonic correlations in the cross-linear (TE-TM or TM-TE) configuration. Without any free parameters, our microscopic theory gives a quantitative understanding how many-particle effects can lead to a rotation or change of the outgoing (amplified) probe signal's vectorial polarization state relative to the incoming one's.

Generation and Dynamics of Vortex Lattices in Coherent Exciton-Polariton Fields

“…The system is thus equivalent to a self-defocusing Kerr medium in which stable optical vortex solitons have been observed [28]. The exchange interaction between polaritons dominates over the direct one, and thus polariton-polariton interactions are spindependent j 2 j < 1 , 2 < 0 [29][30][31][32]. The driving optical pump field is given by p ðr; tÞ and E p is the pump energy.…”

Optical Circuits Based on Polariton Neurons in Semiconductor Microcavities

“…It is well known that for 2D excitons and exciton-polaritons the exchange interaction strongly dominates over the direct one, and thus polariton-polariton interactions are anisotropic j 2 j < 1 [36 -39]. This anisotropy strongly affects the properties of polariton systems in the superfluid regime [28,40] and leads to remarkable effects in polariton spin relaxation, such as self-induced Larmor precession and inversion of the linear polarization during the scattering act [19,39,41]. In Eq.…”

Optical instabilities in semiconductor quantum‐well systems driven by phase‐space filling

“…The HF mean-field effect has been found earlier to dominate stimulated polariton scattering and related instabilities in planar semiconductor microcavities (see, for example, [21][22][23][24][25][26]). But two-exciton correlations beyond the HF levels have also been found to be important, and in our work [10,11] we focused on tracing the instabilities and corresponding polariton-polariton interactions to the underlying excitonic correlation functions (T-matrices), which, in turn, are based on a fermionic theory. Finally, we mention that we have shown that the idea of an all-optical switch driven by FWM instabilities can be realized in semiconductor microcavities [12,13].…”

“…First, we briefly review our recent work in this area, which includes single semiconductor quantum wells (QWs) [8], Bragg-spaced multiple quantum wells [9], and planar semiconductor microcavities [10][11][12][13]. Instead of studying spontaneous off-axis pattern formation induced by these instabilities, we investigated mainly their role in a pump-probe setup as illustrated in Fig.…”

“…(2) are the basic ingredients of our recent instability studies of single quantum wells [8], Bragg-spaced quantum wells [9] and microcavities [10][11][12]. In the following, we illustrate the linear stability analysis of a single QW for the simple case of PSF nonlinearites, in other words we neglect the Coulomb terms in Eq.…”