Nature and dynamics of low-energy exciton polaritons in semiconductor microcavities

Low-energy polaritons in semiconductor microcavities are important for many processes, such as, e.g., polariton condensation. Organic microcavities frequently feature both strong exciton-photon coupling and substantial scattering in the exciton subsystem. Low-energy polaritons possessing small or vanishing group velocities are especially susceptible to the effects of such scattering that can render them strongly localized. We compare the time evolution of low-energy wave packets in perfect microcavities and in a model one-dimensional cavity with diagonal disorder to illustrate this localization of polaritons and to draw attention to the need to explore its consequences for the kinetics and collective properties of polaritons.