Strong coupling regime in semiconductor microcavities

We introduce to the physics of semiconductor microcavities in the strong coupling regime, also known as cavity-polariton. We discuss the optical response, cavity-polariton dispersion curve, inhomogeneous broadening due to disorder effect and homogeneous broadening due to acoustic phonon scattering. We present novel effects on high quality samples on elastic scattering and parametric oscillation effects in the non-linear response under resonant excitation. To cite this article: R. Houdré et al., C. R. Physique 3 (2002) 15–27