Abstract

Modifications of spontaneous-emission properties of atoms in cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) are generally classified into the weak-coupling regime, characterized by enhanced or inhibited spontaneous emission, and the strong-coupling regime, characterized by energy exchange between atoms and photons (e.g., vacuum Rabi oscillations). Progress in semiconductor microstructures has prompted great interest in studying similar effects in solid-state systems, with potential applications in microphotonics and optoelectronics.¹ Recently, evidence of both weak and strong cavity QED effects, such as spontaneous-emission modification and vacuum Rabi splitting, have been found in semiconductor microcavities² and microlasers.³ Here we report a quantitative study of the luminescence decay rate of a GaAs/AlGaAs microlaser by time-correlated photon counting. Our result shows that the strong cavity- medium coupling can cause a significant enhancement of the luminescence-decay rate in a room-temperature semiconductor microlaser.

© 1995 Optical Society of America