Abstract

Semiconductors, glasses, liquid droplets, and polymers can now be formed into high Q optical microresonators with dimensions in the range near 1 μm. These small cavities filled with an emitter, such as semiconductor quantum wells or dye molecules, approach the limit where there is only one optical cavity mode within the emitted spectrum. This strong coupling results in interesting cavity QED phenomena in these condensed matter systems including exciton-mode cavity spectral splittings.¹ A nonstatistical quantum description² of lasing threshold phenomena is required in the microcavity limit since the total spontaneous emission rate near threshold is comparable to the spontaneous and stimulated rate into the lasing mode and there are only a small number of photons and modes involved in the threshold dynamics.

© 1996 Optical Society of America