Observation of the exciton-photon strong coupling regime at room temperature in a microcavity containing J aggregates of pseudoisocyanine

This paper discusses the strong exciton-photon coupling regime in a planar dielectric SiO2/ZrO2 microcavity containing a half-wave defect with an active layer in the form of a nanometer film of J aggregates of pseudoisocyanine. The reflectance spectrum of the microcavity at room temperature and at an inclination of 6degrees includes two polariton peaks with a vacuum Rabi splitting of 82.5 meV. The measured splitting is an order of magnitude greater than the value recorded earlier for semiconductor microcavities containing quantum wells based on GaAs/GaAlAs and is once and a half as large as the splitting for microcavities at liquid-helium temperature and containing J aggregates of pseudoisocyanine. (C) 2004 Optical Society of America.