Polariton spin beats in semiconductor quantum well microcavities

Denis Scalbert (1) , Masha Vladimirova (1) , Adalberto Brunetti (1) , Steeve Cronenberger (1) , Michal Nawrocki (2) , Jacqueline Bloch (3) , Alexei Kavokin , I.A. Shelykh (4) , Régis André (5) , Dimitri Solnyshkov (4) , Guillaume Malpuech (4)

1 GES - Groupe d'étude des semiconducteurs
2 IFD - Institute of Experimental Physics [Warsaw]
3 LPN - Laboratoire de photonique et de nanostructures
4 LASMEA - Laboratoire des sciences et matériaux pour l'électronique et d'automatique
5 NEEL - NPSC - Nanophysique et Semiconducteurs

Time-resolved Kerr (Faraday) rotation experiments allow for the observation of polariton spin beats in both InGaAs and CdMnTe quantum well (QW) microcavities. The existence of these beats is an unambiguous manifestation of the coherent energy exchange between exciton and photon components of polariton states created by a circularly polarized and spectrally wide femtosecond laser pulse. The polariton states are also shown to be split into a linearly polarized doublet. This splitting is responsible for the polarization transfer between linearly and circularly polarized states. In a highest quality sample the resulting spin dynamics could be detected.

Domaines: Physique mathématique [math-ph]; Physique mathématique [math-ph]

Denis Scalbert, Masha Vladimirova, Adalberto Brunetti, Steeve Cronenberger, Michal Nawrocki, et al.. Polariton spin beats in semiconductor quantum well microcavities. 7th International Conference on Physics of Light-Matter coupling in Nanostructures, Apr 2007, La Havane, Cuba. pp.417. ⟨hal-00388436⟩