On the nature and dynamics of low-energy cavity polaritons

TL;DR

This paper investigates how disorder affects low-energy cavity polaritons in semiconductor microcavities, highlighting localization effects and their implications for polariton dynamics and collective behavior.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of wave packet evolution in perfect and disordered microcavities, emphasizing the impact of scattering on polariton localization.

Findings

Disorder causes localization of low-energy polaritons.

Wave packets in disordered cavities exhibit slowed or halted propagation.

Localization influences polariton kinetics and collective phenomena.

Abstract

Low-energy polaritons in semiconductor microcavities are important for many processes such as, e.g., polariton condensation. Organic microcavities frequently feature both strong exciton-photon coupling and substantial scattering in the exciton subsystem. Low-energy polaritons possessing small or vanishing group velocities are especially susceptible to the effects of such scattering that can render them strongly localized. We compare the time evolution of low-energy wave packets in perfect microcavities and in a model 1$d$ cavity with diagonal disorder to illustrate this localization of polaritons and to draw attention to the need to explore its consequences for the kinetics and collective properties of polaritons.