Abstract

Weisbuch et al.[l] were the first to report nor mal mode coupling (NMC), or vacuum-field Rabi splitting, in a semiconductor microcavity. Here the nonlinear transmission of a microcavity exhibiting a very large splitting-to-linewidth ratio is studied. An essential part of this nonlinear study is the narrowness of the 8-nm In_0.03Ga_0.97As quantum-well exciton absorption lines (1 meV = 0.6 nm at 4K); see Fig. la. Strain shifts the light-hole exciton peak to 826 nm, so that it does not interfere with NMC anticrossing studies with the heavy hole; see Fig. 1b. This small linewidth leads to record (even for many atoms) NMC splitting-to-linewidth ratios: 7 in high reflectivity (99.92%) sample NMC20 (fig. lc), or 4.5 for lower reflectivity (99.5%) sample NMC22.

© 1996 Optical Society of America