Stimulated secondary emission from semiconductor microcavities.

We find strong influence of final-state stimulation on the time-resolved light emission dynamics from semiconductor microcavities after pulsed excitation allowing angle-resonant polariton-polariton scattering on the lower-polariton branch. The polariton dynamics can be controlled by injection of final-state polaritons at densities below a polariton saturation density of 5x10(8) cm(-2). A bosonic enhancement factor in the dynamics of up to 700 is evaluated.     

On the development time of the parametric instability of polariton-polariton scattering in a planar semiconductor microcavity

It has been shown that the development of the threshold instability of polariton-polariton scattering in a planar semiconductor microcavity under the coherent pulsed excitation above the lower polariton branch requires a minimum pulse length on the order of dozens of picoseconds, needed for the population of polariton modes in the regions of the parametric instability to increase from the noise level to a certain value comparable with the population of the driven mode.     

Energy relaxation of excitonlike polaritons in semiconductor microcavities: Effect on the parametric scattering of polaritons

Polariton emission in GaAs-based microcavities has been studied under variable conditions, which made it possible to excite (a) polaritons from the upper polariton branch and hot free polaritons and electrons, (b) polaritons from the lower polariton branch (LPB) and localized excitons, and (c) the mixed system. Variation of the excitation conditions leads to substantial differences in the energy distributions of polaritons and in the temperature dependences of polariton emission. It is established that the energy relaxation of resonantly excited LPB polaritons via polariton and localized exciton states at liquid helium temperatures is ineffective. Instead, the relaxation bottleneck effect is suppressed with increasing temperature by means of exciton delocalization (due to thermal excitation by phonons). The most effective mechanism of relaxation to the LPB bottom is via scattering of delocalized excitons on hot free carriers. It is found that the slow energy relaxation of polaritons excited below the free exciton energy can be significantly accelerated at low temperatures by means of additional weak generation of hot excitons and, especially, hot electrons. This acceleration of the energy relaxation of polaritons by means of additional overbarrier photoexcitation sharply decreases the barrier for stimulated parametric scattering of polaritons excited at an LPB inflection point. Therefore, additional illumination can be used to control the polariton-polariton scattering.     

Direct observation of polariton velocity in CuCl

Dynamic behaviour of the polariton-polariton resonant scattering process in CuCl was observed in a forward scattering configuration using a picosecond tunable source. The propagation times of the polariton in the crystal was estimated at various energies near the transverse exciton. They are well fitted with the theoretical group velocity calculated from the dispersion curve of the polariton.     

Polariton kinetics for bosonic condensation in CdTe-microcavities for various Rabi splittings and detunings

The applied Boltzmann relaxation kinetics for stationary and ps-pulsed nonresonant pumping takes the polariton-acoustic phonon and the polariton-polariton scattering into account. For cavities with a vacuum Rabi splitting around , we find for ps-pulse excitation a transient bosonic condensation in the ground state. For microcavities with a large vacuum Rabi splitting of we find for zero detuning, due to the steep increase of radiative losses, a condensation with a macroscopically occupied state in the wavenumber region at which the Bragg mirrors become transparent. With positive detunings which increase the scattering rates, the finite-size Bose-Einstein condensation in the ground state is restored.     

A negatively charged exciton in a quantum disc

The properties of the bound states of the negatively charged exciton X⁻ in a quantum disc with a confined parabolic potential are studied using exact diagonalization techniques. The binding energy spectra of the ground state and the first excited state are calculated as a function of the confinement strength and the effective electron-to-hole mass ratio. The results we have obtained show that the binding energies are closely correlated to the strength of the confinement potential and the effective electron-to-hole mass ratio.     

Dominant effect of polariton-polariton interactions on the coherence of the microcavity optical parametric oscillator

The importance of interaction effects in determining the temporal coherence of spectrally and spatially isolated single modes of the microcavity optical parametric oscillator (OPO) is demonstrated. As a function of macroscopic occupancy, the coherence time (tau c) first increases linearly and then exhibits saturation behavior, reaching maximum values of up to 500 ps. Good agreement is found with a model including fluctuations in polariton number and polariton-polariton interactions between the OPO states. tau c is a property of the coupled OPO system, a result confirmed by the finding of equal coherence times for signal and idler, even though the idler is subject to strong additional scattering.     

Time resolved scattering relaxation mechanisms of microcavity polaritons

We study the polariton relaxation dynamics for different scattering mechanisms as: Phonon and electron scattering procesess. The relaxation polariton is obtained at very short times by solving the Boltzman equation. Instead of the well-known relaxation process by phonons, we show that the bottleneck effect relaxes to the ground state more efficiently at low pump power intensity when the electron relaxation process is included. In this way, we clearly demonstrate that different relaxation times exist, for which any of these two mechanism is more efficient to relax the polariton population to the ground state.     

The effective interaction for unbound nucleons and the optical potential

The effective interaction for an unbound nucleon in a complex nucleus is studied with particular emphasis upon the relationship of the unbound state interaction with the interaction for bound states. A successful unified treatment of unbound and bound states is given, and the unbound state effective interaction is related to the standard “optical model”. The attractive force for an unbound nucleon is shown to be of an exchange type and is best represented by a non-local, energy-independent potential which can be calculated, at least for not too high incident nucleon energy, from the attractive interaction between bound nucleons in a nucleus. We relate the unbound state potential to the bound state effective force as calculated by Negele using Hartree-Fock theory.

A non-local potential used by Elton, Webb, and Barrett in a successful analysis of electron scattering is shown, with minor modification, to work remarkably well in an analysis of elastic scattering of protons. Excellent agreement with experiment is obtained for the differential cross section and the polarization of protons with an incident energy up to 60 MeV scattered from ⁴⁰Ca, ⁵⁸Ni, ¹²⁰Sn and ²⁰⁸Pb. The real potential parameters are shown to be independent of the incident energy and physically reasonable; the imaginary potential parameters agree with expectations from Fermi gas and collective models. Bound state energy levels are also calculated with no readjustment of the real potential parameters in order to check the consistency of the interaction with the bound states, and the results are in good agreement with Negele.

The interaction of Skyrme as modified by Vautherin and Brink is also used in an analysis of elastic proton scattering. Good results are obtained for the differential cross section and the polarization for 20 MeV protons scattered from ⁵⁸Ni. At higher incident proton energy, and for larger nuclei, the results are poorer.     

Influence of exciton-exciton interaction with spin paired charge carriers and exciton-lattice interaction on the surface properties of crystalline solids

Applying tight-binding approximation and spin pairing of like charge carriers in a pair of excitons created in a lattice, the possibility of forming a bound exciton-exciton state is studied. It is found that, provided there exists strong exciton-lattice interaction, such a bound state may be formed and its energy may lie within the valence band deforming the material into a crystalline solid with no energy gap. Lowering of the energy is calculated in naphthalene and anthracene crystals where some experimental results are known. The excess energy released after the formation of such bound state can be adequate, depending on the material, to desorb neutral atoms or eject of electrons from surfaces.     

A method to obtain kinematic intensities from low-energy electron diffraction data

In order to use low-energy electron diffraction as a tool for surface crystallography, it would be useful to extract the single scattering, or kinematic part, from the intensity data. Details of a method to do this by taking data with different diffraction geometry but at fixed momentum transfer are presented. The method is illustrated by data from Ni and Ag. The temperature dependence of the averaged intensity is presented. The multiple scattering contributions to the averaged intensity can be accounted for by an effective atomic scattering factor. Conditions for the applicability of the method are discussed. From the resulting kinematic intensities, the surface atomic arrangements can be determined by simple modifications of conventional crystallographic analysis.     

Bipolariton laser emission from a GaAs microcavity

Biexciton emission properties were studied in a single GaAs quantum well semiconductor planar microcavity by photoluminescence measurements at low temperatures. At high pump intensity a bipolariton emission appears close to the lower polariton mode. This new mode appears when we detune the cavity resonance out of the lower polariton branch, showing a laser-like behavior. Very small linewidths were measured, lying below 110 μeV and 150 μeV for polariton and bipolariton emission respectively. The input/output power (I/O) measurements show that the bipolariton emission has a weaker coupling efficiency compared to previous results for polariton emission. Varying the pump laser polarization, we were able to show the selection rules for the biexciton particle creation in the quantum well. Simultaneous photoluminescence and near-field measurements show that the polariton and bipolariton emission are spectrally and spatially separated.     

Parametric scattering in a system of quasi-two-dimensional exciton polaritons under photoexcitation near the bottom of the upper polariton branch

Cascade processes of exciton-polariton scattering in a planar semiconductor microcavity taking place under resonance pumping near the bottom of the upper polariton branch are studied theoretically. When the conservation laws allow the decay of the resonantly excited state into two modes that belong to different (the upper and lower) polariton branches, the distribution of scattering directions has the general shape of two rings that correspond to the cross sections of the lower and upper polariton dispersion surfaces by constantenergy planes. Due to the interactions between the particles, instability develops in the system of scattered modes, which is accompanied by marked inhomogeneities in the distribution of the cavity photoluminescence signal. Self-organization in such a system leads to the appearance of solutions of an essentially collective nature. As the critical (threshold) pump power is attained, macroscopic occupancy of a predominant signal mode near the bottom of the lower polariton branch sets in. The characteristics of the signal for different powers and optical polarizations of the pump are analyzed.     

Stimulated parametric scattering of excitonic polaritons in planar GaAs microcavities: Distinctive feature of QW electric field

Instabilities in the electric field at the QW in the active region of a GaAs based microcavity have been investigated under the resonance excitation near the inflection point of the low polariton (LP) dispersion curve with the use of four wave mixing technique. The electric field jump due to an LP bistability has been found to precede the development of a stimulated parametric scattering of LPs. The latter has been found to develop with a delay of a few hundreds ps from the beginning of the excitation pulse. These results are in qualitative agreement with hard regime of excitation of the stimulated parametric LP scattering predicted recently.     

Influence of excited Landau levels on a two-dimensional electron-hole system in a strong perpendicular magnetic field

The study of the quantum states of a two-dimensional electron-hole system in a strong perpendicular magnetic field is carried out with special attention to the influence of virtual quantum transitions of interacting particles between the Landau levels. These virtual quantum transitions from the lowest Landau levels to excited Landau levels with arbitrary quantum numbers n and m and their reversion to the lowest Landau levels in second order perturbation theory result in an indirect attraction between the particles. The influence of the indirect interaction on the magnetoexciton ground state, on the chemical potential of the Bose-Einstein condensed magnetoexcitons, and on the ground state energy of the metallic-type electron-hole liquid is investigated in the Hartree-Fock approximation. The coexistence of different phases is suggested.     

Electron-hole diagrams versus exciton diagrams: the simplest problem on interacting excitons

We study the interaction of an exciton with a distant metal, which is the simplest problem on interacting excitons: The semiconductor and metal electrons being “different” species, we do not have to worry about the tricky consequences of Pauli exclusion between identical carriers, which appear in any other problem on interacting excitons. We show how the exciton absorption, in the presence of semiconductor-metal interaction, can be derived in a very simple and transparent way from an exciton diagram procedure, provided that we use the appropriate exciton-metal interaction vertex, which contains the scattering from an exciton state to another exciton state under a Coulomb excitation. We also show that the resolution of this problem using standard electron-hole diagrams is dreadfully complicated at the lowest order in the semiconductor-metal interaction already, preventing a full calculation of the exciton-metal coupling from this usual technique. Received 26 February 2001     

Polarized nonequilibrium Bose-Einstein condensates of spinor exciton polaritons in a magnetic field

The effect of a magnetic field on a spinor exciton-polariton condensate has been investigated. A quenching of a polariton Zeeman splitting and an elliptical polarization of the condensate have been observed at low magnetic fields B<2 T. The effects are attributed to a competition between the magnetic field induced circular polarization buildup and the spin-anisotropic polariton-polariton interaction which favors a linear polarization. The sign of the circular polarization of the condensate emission at B<3 T is negative, suggesting that a dynamic condensation in the excited spin state rather than the ground spin state takes place in this magnetic field range. From about 2T on, the Zeeman splitting opens and from then on the slope of the circular polarization degree changes its sign. For magnetic fields larger than the 3 T, the upper spin state occupation is energetically suppressed and circularly polarized condensation takes place in the ground state.     

Polaronic exciton in quantum wells wires and nanotubes

We investigate the effect of the longitudinal-optical phonon field on the binding energies of excitons in quantum wells, well-wires and nanotubes based on ionic semiconductors. We take into account the exciton-phonon interaction by using the Aldrich-Bajaj effective potential for Wannier excitons in a polarizable medium. We extend the fractional-dimensional method developed previously for neutral and negatively charged donors to calculate the exciton binding energies in these heterostructures. In this method, the exciton wave function is taken as a product of the ground state functions of the electron polaron and hole polaron with a correlation function that depends only on the electron-hole separation. Starting from the variational principle we derive a one-dimensional differential equation, which is solved numerically by using the trigonometric sweep method. We find that the potential that takes into account polaronic effects always give rise to larger exciton binding energies than those obtained using a Coulomb potential screened by a static dielectric constant. This enhancement of the binding energy is more considerable in quantum wires and nanotubes than in quantum wells. Our results for quantum wells are in a good agreement with previous variational calculations. Also, we present novel curves of the exciton binding energies as a function of the wire and nanotubes radii for different models of the confinement potential.     

s-wave bound and scattering state wave functions for a velocity-dependent Kisslinger potential

A relation linking the normalized s-wave scattering and the corresponding bound state wave functions at bound state poles is derived. This is done in the case of a non-local, velocity-dependent Kisslinger potential. Using formal scattering theory, we present two analytical proofs of the validity of the theorem. The first tackles the non-local potential directly, while the other transforms the potential to an equivalent local but energy-dependent one. The theorem is tested both analytically and numerically by solving the Schr?dinger equation exactly for the scattering and bound state wave functions when the Kisslinger potential has the form of a square well. A first order approximation to the deviation from the theorem away from bound state poles is obtained analytically. Furthermore, a proof of the analyticity of the Jost solutions in the presence of a non-local potential term is also given. Received: 3 March 2001 / Accepted: 9 June 2001