Abstract
Very large changes in the population distributions of microcavity polaritons are reported under conditions of simultaneous resonant and nonresonant excitation. The strong relaxation bottleneck, which results in weak emission from the lower polariton branch for resonant excitation alone, is fully suppressed if additional nonresonant excitation is employed. By comparison with theory, the massive enhancement of the polariton relaxation is shown to arise from scattering of polaritons by free carriers, present in quantum wells due to residual doping, which are then heated by the nonresonant excitation.
- Received 30 January 2003
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.67.165302
©2003 American Physical Society