Abstract

Semiconductor vertical microcavity structures are of considerable interest for both practical applications and the opportunity they provide to observe cavity-QED effects in condensed-matter systems. Recently, Weisbuch et al. [1] observed the mode splitting that occurs when the photon mode of a single-mode Fabry-Perot microcavity is resonant with the exciton absorption of quantum wells situated in the center of the microcavity; the splitting is interpreted as the vacuum-Rabi splitting of the coupled exciton-photon system. Physically, this corresponds to a vacuum Rabi oscillation, wherein a photon in the cavity is absorbed via the exciton absorption and subsequently reemitted into the cavity photon mode [2], This mode splitting was observed via the reflectivity spectrum of the sample, and was thus a frequency-domain probe of the coupled system normal modes. In the experiments reported here, time-resolved optical techniques were used to probe the coherent response of the coupled exciton/cavity system.

© 1993 Optical Society of America