Four-wave mixing in microcavities with embedded quantum wells

A theory of the degenerate four-wave mixing in semiconductor microcavities with embedded quantum wells has been developed, taking into account the two-level-like, anharmoniclike, and biexcitonic mechanisms of nonlinearity. Due to the confinement of the photon mode in the microcavity, the intensity of the self-diffracted wave is enhanced by several orders of magnitude as compared to a similar nonlinear process for a single-quantum-well structure. The time-resolved and time-integrated nonlinear signals exhibit pronounced oscillations related to the exciton-polariton splitting in the quantum cavity and the biexciton binding energy.