Room-temperature cavity polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity

Abstract

Strong exciton-photon coupling can be achieved in a semiconductor microcavity. In this regime, the Fabry-P\'erot photon mode of the cavity and the exciton electronic mode are no longer the eigenstates of the system. Both states are strongly coupled and cavity polaritons occur. The splitting of the cavity polariton is also known as vacuum-field Rabi splitting in atomic physics. We observe this regime up to room temperature. This may have important implications from a device application point of view because perturbative approaches of the light-matter interaction such as Fermi's golden rule are no longer valid. The magnitude of the splitting depends on the exciton oscillator strength and provides an accurate measurement of it.