Nonlinear optics of coupled semiconductor microcavities

In a coupled microcavity configuration with Ken optical nonlinearities in the external as well as in the central distributed Bragg reflectors, the energies of the closely spaced doublet of delocalized photon eigenmodes change with increasing light intensity. One beam optical bistability as well as all optical switching in a pump and probe configuration can be realized. The nonlinearity can induce a novel kind of Rabi anticrossing between a photonic mode and a nearly resonating quantum well exciton. Realistic numerical simulations of such effects in AlGaAs based microstructures are presented. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.