Berlin 2012 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

HL: Fachverband Halbleiterphysik

HL 49: Ultrafast Phenomena

HL 49.5: Talk

Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 10:30–10:45, EW 202

Control of transverse polariton patterns in semiconductor microcavities — •Przemyslaw Lewandowski, Andreas Lücke, and Stefan Schumacher — Physics Department and Center for Optoelectronics and Photonics Paderborn (CeOPP), Universität Paderborn, Paderborn, Germany

Transverse optical patterns are suitable for realising very efficient all-optical switches in atomic vapour systems [1], e.g. Rubidium. Here, we theoretically analyse to which extent the underlying concept of wave-mixing induced coherent transverse patterns and their control can be transferred to a semiconductor-based system. We study quantum-well based planar semiconductor microcavities as promising candidates.

Our theoretical investigation of the coherently-driven nonlinear polariton dynamics is based on a direct time-domain solution of the Maxwell and semiconductor Bloch-equations in the coherent limit and mean-field approximation for the excitonic component (resembling an extended two-component Gross-Pitaevskii-type equation). We (i) analyse in detail the stability and bistability of the spatially homogenous stationary solutions of these nonlinear equations and (ii) present fully two-dimensional numerical calculations showing transverse pattern formation in spatially anisotropic systems. We also demonstrate the all-optical control of these patterns in analogy to what was achieved in atomic vapour systems before [1].

[1] A.M.C. Dawes, D.J. Gauthier, S. Schumacher, N.H. Kwong, R. Binder, and A.L. Smirl, Transverse optical patterns for ultra-low-light-level all-optical switching, Laser & Photonics Reviews 4, 221 (2010).