Optical Kerr nonlinearity in quantum-well microcavities: From polariton to dipolariton

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the nonlinear optical properties and photon correlations in a cavity containing quantum wells and interacting with a third-order nonlinear medium. More precisely, we study the interaction of the photonic Kerr nonlinearity with polariton and dipolariton quasiparticles in thermal environments. The optical bistability, the intensity spectrum, and the squeezing spectrum of the transmitted radiation are analyzed. It is shown that the regime of the bistability is reached in the dipolariton cavity faster than attained by the polariton system. Furthermore, the increase of the coupling with the wells reduces the squeezing. More interestingly, it turns out that the additional interactions arising in the dipolariton cavity, between direct and indirect excitons, slow down the variation of the squeezing. As a consequence, dipolaritons offer a greater margin of squeezed light than polaritons, and also than the ${\ensuremath{\chi}}^{(3)}$ medium in the absence of quantum wells. Moreover, the dipolariton system is found to be much more robust against the bath temperature in the weak-coupling regime.