Hyper Raman Scattering in Microcavity Quantum Wells: A Quantum Optical Process in the Strong Coupling Regime

Abstract

We analyze the hyper Raman scattering process in a quantum well grown inside a semiconductor microcavity and present a microscopic calculation of emission spectra as a function of excitation energy, detuning, and angles. The exciton-photon coupling is treated non-perturbatively to include polariton effects and the Coulomb interaction between electrons is treated beyond the mean field approximation. The observation of hyper Raman scattering in semiconductor microcavities would represent an important step for the realization of non-classical optical states based on excitons. We find that the polaritons emitted in this scattering process are strongly correlated. This correlation,can be efficiently transferred to output photons, resulting in emission of two correlated non-classical light beams. As a probe of the quantum correlation we calculate the output spectrum of fluctuations in the intensity difference of the two beams generated in the hyper Raman process.