Time-resolved vacuum Rabi oscillations in a semiconductor quantum microcavity

Abstract

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.