Coherent and incoherent dynamics of excitons in semiconductor microcavities.

We have investigated the dynamics of impulsively excited planar microcavities in the strongly coupled regime. With resonant, coherent excitation, the emitted light shows vacuum-Rabi oscillations and a lifetime corresponding to twice the cavity lifetime. As the light intensity is increased, the exciton bleaching leads to reduced normal-mode splitting. The role of interface disorder on the dynamic splitting is discussed. Coherence transfer in exciton-exciton scattering is observed. Off-resonant excitation leads to long lifetimes limited by scattering into the radiatively coupled states of the exciton-cavity system.