Influence of the mirrors on the strong coupling regime in planar GaN microcavities

TL;DR

This study investigates how different mirror configurations in GaN microcavities affect the strong coupling regime, revealing the impact of mirror penetration depth on Rabi splitting and observing lower polariton emission at low temperatures.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the influence of mirror design on strong coupling in GaN microcavities, supported by experimental and simulation results.

Findings

Increasing mirror penetration depth reduces Rabi splitting.

Lower polariton emission observed at 5 K with high quality factor.

Simulations agree well with experimental data.

Abstract

The optical properties of bulk $\lambda/2$ GaN microcavities working in the strong light-matter coupling regime are investigated using angle-dependent reflectivity and photoluminescence at 5 K and 300 K. The structures have an Al$_{0.2}$Ga$_{0.8}$N/AlN distributed Bragg reflector as the bottom mirror and either an aluminium mirror or a dielectric Bragg mirror as the top one. First, the influence of the number of pairs of the bottom mirror on the Rabi splitting is studied. The increase of the mirror penetration depth is correlated with a reduction of the Rabi splitting. Second, the emission of the lower polariton branch is observed at low temperature in a microcavity containing two Bragg mirrors and exibiting a quality factor of 190. Our simulations using the transfer-matrix formalism, taking into account the real structure of the samples investigated are in good agreement with experimental results.