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High Occupancy Effects and Condensation Phenomena in Semiconductor Microcavities and Bulk Semiconductors

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Nano-Optoelectronics

Part of the book series: NanoScience and Technology ((NANO))

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Abstract

Semiconductor microcavities are micron scale photonic structures in which quantum wells are embedded within a high finesse Fabry-Perot cavity, the whole structure being prepared by high precision, modern crystal growth techniques [1]. In such structures vertical confinement of both excitons in the quantum wells and of light within the Fabry-Perot cavity results in strong and controllable light-matter interactions unachievable in quantum wells or bulk semiconductors. This control has opened up a new field of exciton-polariton physics, where key features of the interacting exciton-photon system can be tailored by sample design. Most importantly for the physics described here, the dispersion curves of the coupled two-dimensional (2D) exciton-photon modes, exciton-polaritons (termed cavity polaritons), differ from those of their bulk analogues since the confinement of light results in a finite energy at k=0. This property, combined with the controllable dispersion and the extremely low density of polariton states [1], has recently allowed a variety of new phenomena to be observed, including final state stimulation and a new condensed phase with macroscopic coherence, which have the potential to lead to new devices including very low threshold optical parametric oscillators and a coherent light source based on stimulated polariton scattering.

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Authors
  1. Maurice S. Skolnick
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  2. Alexander I. Tartakovskii
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  3. Raphaël Butté
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  4. R. Mark Stevenson
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  5. Jeremy J. Baumberg
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  6. David M. Whittaker
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Experimentelle Physik II, Halbleiterphysik, Universität Leipzig, Linnéstrasse 5, 04103, Leipzig, Germany

    Marius Grundmann

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Skolnick, M.S., Tartakovskii, A.I., Butté, R., Stevenson, R.M., Baumberg, J.J., Whittaker, D.M. (2002). High Occupancy Effects and Condensation Phenomena in Semiconductor Microcavities and Bulk Semiconductors. In: Grundmann, M. (eds) Nano-Optoelectronics. NanoScience and Technology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-56149-8_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-56149-8_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-62807-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-56149-8

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