Charge-Induced Coherence between Intersubband Plasmons in a Quantum Structure

Abstract

In this Letter we investigate a low dimensional semiconductor system, in which the light-matter interaction is enhanced by the cooperative behavior of a large number of dipolar oscillators, at different frequencies, mutually phase locked by Coulomb interaction. We experimentally and theoretically demonstrate that, owing to this phenomenon, the optical response of a semiconductor quantum well with several occupied subbands is a single sharp resonance, associated with the excitation of a bright multisubband plasmon. This effect illustrates how the whole oscillator strength of a two-dimensional system can be concentrated into a single resonance independently from the shape of the confining potential. When this cooperative excitation is tuned in resonance with a cavity mode, their coupling strength can be increased monotonically with the electronic density, allowing the achievement of the ultrastrong coupling regime up to room temperature.