Ultrafast acoustic switching of an optically pumped cavity polariton system in the bistable regime

Abstract

Abstract Nonequilibrium transitions are investigated in a plane exciton-polariton system with complex acousto-optical excitation: stationary resonant optical excitation of polaritons along the normal to the surface of the resonator and picosecond strain pulses causing reversible exciton energy perturbations. It is shown that acoustic pulses can be used for ultrafast switching of the optical response of a bistable polariton system. Switching is experimentally implemented in a high-Q GaAs microcavity.