Consequences of strong coupling between excitons and microcavity leaky modes -: art. no. 071916

Semiconductor microcavities are known to exhibit the so-called leaky modes due to the Bragg structure of the cavity mirrors. In case of microcavities operating in the strong coupling regime, the leaky modes are usually considered as a perturbation for the polariton modes. Using microcavities based on II-VI compounds we observed that leaky modes and excitons can be strongly coupled and lead to complex multimode polaritons. The consequences for photoluminescence under nonresonant excitation and potential applications are discussed in terms of polariton state occupancy and photonic weight. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics.