Dynamical narrowing of the Rayleigh scattering ring from a semiconductor microcavity

Summary form only given. In resonant secondary emission of light (SE), scattering by static disorder leads to coherent resonant Rayleigh scattering (RRS), while the scattering with other quasi-particles (e.g. phonons) leads to an incoherent emission called photoluminescence (PL). For a bare quantum well (QW) the SE does not depend significantly on the emission direction due to the small exciton dispersion within the optically accessible in-plane wave vectors. Compared to bare excitons the dispersion of microcavity (MC) polaritons is steep at small in-plane wavevectors, so that MC polaritons show a directional RRS emission. We investigate the directional SE dynamics from a MC at 5 K consisting of an 25 nm GaAs single quantum well placed in the center of a /spl lambda/-cavity having an exciton resonance of negligible inhomogeneous broadening.