Magnetic field control of intersubband polaritons in narrow-gap semiconductors

TL;DR

This paper theoretically explores how a vertical magnetic field influences intersubband polaritons in narrow-gap semiconductors, revealing magnetic control over light-matter interactions and potential for parametric amplification.

Contribution

It introduces a model showing magnetic field tuning of polariton states in non-parabolic semiconductor heterostructures, highlighting a new control mechanism for light-matter coupling.

Findings

Magnetic field significantly alters polariton eigenstates.

Polaritons in non-parabolic semiconductors do not behave as a simple two-level system.

Intermediate magnetic fields enable conditions suitable for parametric amplification.

Abstract

We investigate theoretically the polariton coupling between the light confined in a planar cavity and the intersubband transitions of a two-dimensional electron gas confined in semiconductor quantum wells in the presence of a vertical magnetic field. We show that in heterostructures made of non-parabolic semiconductors, the polaritons do not fit a two-level problem, since the cavity photons couple to a non-degenerate ensemble of intersubband transitions. As a consequence, the stationary polariton eigenstates become very sensitive to the vertical magnetic field, which thus plays the role of an external parameter that controls the regime of light-matter interactions. At intermediate field strength we predict that the magneto-polaritons have energy dispersions ideally suited to parametric amplification.