NONLINEAR OPTICS OF COUPLED SEMICONDUCTOR MICROCAVITIES

In a coupled microcavity configuration with Ken optical nonlinearities in the external as well as in the central distributed Bragg reflector s, the energies of the closely spaced doublet of delocalized photon ei genmodes change with increasing light intensity. One beam optical bist ability as well as all optical switching in a pump and probe configura tion can be realized. The nonlinearity can induce a novel kind of Rabi anticrossing between a photonic mode and a nearly resonating quantum well exciton. Realistic numerical simulations of such effects in AlGaA s based microstructures are presented. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.