arXiv2003
The optical properties of excitonic molecules (XXs) in GaAs-based quantum well microcavities (MCs) are studied, both theoretically and experimentally. We show that the radiative corrections to the XX state, the Lamb shift $Δ^{\rm MC}_{\rm XX}$ and radiative width $Γ^{\rm MC}_{\rm XX}$, are large, about $10-30 %$ of the molecule binding energy $ε_{\rm XX}$, and definitely cannot be neglected. The optics of excitonic molecules is dominated by the in-plane resonant dissociation of the molecules into outgoing 1$λ$-mode and 0$λ$-mode cavity polaritons. The later decay channel, ``excitonic molecule $\to$ 0$λ$-mode polariton + 0$λ$-mode polariton'', deals with the short-wavelength MC polaritons invisible in standard optical experiments, i.e., refers to ``hidden'' optics of microcavities. By using transient four-wave mixing and pump-probe spectroscopies, we infer that the radiative width, associated with excitonic molecules of the binding energy $ε_{\rm XX} \simeq 0.9-1.1$ meV, is $Γ^{\rm MC}_{\rm XX} \simeq 0.2-0.3$ meV in the microcavities and $Γ^{\rm QW}_{\rm XX} \simeq 0.1$ meV in a reference GaAs single quantum well (QW). We show that for our high-quality quasi-two-dimensional nanostructures the $T_2 = 2 T_1$ limit, relevant to the XX states, holds at temperatures below 10 K, and that the bipolariton model of excitonic molecules explains quantitatively and self-consistently the measured XX radiative widths. We also find and characterize two critical points in the dependence of the radiative corrections against the microcavity detuning, and propose to use the critical points for high-precision measurements of the molecule bindingenergy and microcavity Rabi splitting.