Competition between horizontal and vertical polariton lasing in planar microcavities

TL;DR

This paper investigates the competition between radiative and guided polariton lasing modes in planar microcavities, showing how detuning influences which mode dominates and suggesting implications for understanding polariton condensation phenomena.

Contribution

It demonstrates the coexistence and competition of radiative and guided polariton lasing modes in microcavities and how detuning controls the dominant lasing mode.

Findings

Lasing can occur in both radiative and guided modes simultaneously.

Detuning controls whether radiative or guided lasing dominates.

The competition may explain previous observations of polariton condensation.

Abstract

Planar microcavities filled with active materials containing excitonic resonances host radiative exciton-polariton (polariton) modes with in-plane wave vectors within the light cone. They also host at least one mode guided in the cavity plane by total internal reflection and which is not radiatively coupled to the vacuum modes except through defects or sample edges. We show that polariton lasing mediated by polariton stimulated scattering can occur concomitantly in both types of modes in a microcavity. By adjusting the detuning between the exciton and the radiative photon mode one can favor polariton lasing either in the radiative or in the guided modes. Our results suggest that the competition between these two types of polariton lasing modes may have played a role in many previous observations of polariton lasing and polariton Bose Einstein condensation.