Coherent control of cavity-polariton secondary emission

Summary form only given. When a quantum-well exciton transition is resonant with a single mode of a high-Q microcavity, the normal modes ("cavity polaritons") of the coupled system are equal admixtures of the exciton and cavity. We have previously shown that, if the lower normal mode is excited by a phase-locked pair of optical pulses, the nonlinear response of a probe pulse tuned to the other (upper) mode may be controlled. Thus the normal modes are coupled in their nonlinear optical response due to the nonlinearity of the exciton underlying the two normal modes. In this paper, we consider the effect of excitation with phase-locked pulse pairs, where the pump spectrum overlaps both normal modes (corresponding to impulsive excitation of the coupled-mode system).