Interband vs. intersubband polaritons and the relevance of quantum confinement

This paper presents a numerical study of the dependence of the coupling between light and intersubband transitions in quantum wells with respect to electronic quantum confinement. Different quantum wells are analysed and it is shown that intersubband polaritons and antipolaritons can be made more stable that interband polaritons by adjusting the inter-subband population differences. This flexibility in control is no possible in the interband excitonic case and may be crucial for THz polaritonic-based devices. (C) 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim