Terahertz polariton sidebands generated by ultrafast strain pulses in an optical semiconductor microcavity

We apply ultrafast optical and acoustic techniques to a semiconductor quantum well microcavity in the strong-coupling regime. By injecting terahertz strain pulses a modulation domain can be obtained in which large variations in the optical frequency are induced on time scales shorter than the polariton decoherence. Under these conditions characteristic sidebands which are spectral fingerprints of the terahertz modulation process appear in the spectrum near the polariton resonance.