Ultranarrow polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity

We have achieved a record high ratio (19) of the Rabi splitting (3.6 meV) to the polariton linewidth (190 mu eV), in a semiconductor lambda microcavity with a single 25 nm GaAs quantum well at the antinode. The narrow polariton lines are obtained with a special cavity design which reduces the exciton broadening due to scattering with free charges and has a very low spatial gradient of the cavity resonance energy. Since the static quantum-well disorder is very small, the polariton broadening is dominantly homogeneous. Still, the measured linewidths close to zero detuning cannot be correctly predicted using the linewidth averaging model. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0003- 6951(00)02922-3].