Room-temperature polariton lasing in semiconductor microcavities

Phys Rev Lett. 2007 Mar 23;98(12):126405. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.126405. Epub 2007 Mar 21.

Abstract

We observe a room-temperature low-threshold transition to a coherent polariton state in bulk GaN microcavities in the strong-coupling regime. Nonresonant pulsed optical pumping produces rapid thermalization and yields a clear emission threshold of 1 mW, corresponding to an absorbed energy density of 29 microJ cm-2, 1 order of magnitude smaller than the best optically pumped (In,Ga)N quantum-well surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs). Angular and spectrally resolved luminescence show that the polariton emission is beamed in the normal direction with an angular width of +/-5 degrees and spatial size around 5 microm.