Fabrication and characterization of a room-temperature ZnO polariton laser

A ZnO planar optical microcavity displaying room-temperature polariton lasing over a wide range of cavity-exciton detunings has been fabricated. The cavity combines optimum crystalline quality, given by a ZnO single-crystal substrate, and optimum photonic quality, obtained by the use of two dielectric SiO2/HfO2 Bragg mirrors. A maximum cavity quality factor of about 4000 has been measured. Typically, the polariton lasing transition is accompanied by an increase of the output intensity by more than two orders of magnitude, a reduction of the emission linewidth and a relatively small blueshift of the lower polariton branch (less than 5% of the Rabi splitting). (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.