Abstract
Cavity polaritons, the elementary optical excitations of semiconductor microcavities, may be understood as a superposition of excitons and cavity photons1. Owing to their composite nature, these bosonic particles have a distinct optical response, at the same time very fast and highly nonlinear. Very efficient light amplification due to polariton–polariton parametric scattering has recently been reported in semiconductor microcavities at liquid-helium temperatures2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11. Here we demonstrate polariton parametric amplification up to 120 K in GaAlAs-based microcavities and up to 220 K in CdTe-based microcavities. We show that the cut-off temperature for the amplification is ultimately determined by the binding energy of the exciton. A 5-µm-thick planar microcavity can amplify a weak light pulse more than 5,000 times. The effective gain coefficient of an equivalent homogeneous medium would be 107 cm-1. The subpicosecond duration and high efficiency of the amplification could be exploited for high-repetition all-optical microscopic switches and amplifiers. 105 polaritons occupy the same quantum state during the amplification, realizing a dynamical condensate of strongly interacting bosons which can be studied at high temperature.
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Acknowledgements
We thank U. Oesterle and R. Houdré for growing the InGaAs sample, and J.D. Ganiere, G. Hayes, A. Quattropani, R. Romestain, P. Senellart and P. Schwendimann for suggestions. This work has been supported in part by the Fonds National Suisse de la Recherche Scientifique.
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Saba, M., Ciuti, C., Bloch, J. et al. High-temperature ultrafast polariton parametric amplification in semiconductor microcavities. Nature 414, 731–735 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/414731a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/414731a
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