Strong exciton-photon coupling in a length tunable optical microcavity with J-aggregate dye heterostructures

sReceived 23 August 2004; accepted 10 November 2004; published online 20 January 2005d We report the incorporation of thin films of a cyanine dye J aggregate into a versatile, length tunable, optical microcavity. The dense J-aggregate layers give an optical response that can be modified by embedding them at specific positions within heterostructures of dielectric and metal layers. The microcavities are composed of separate gold mirrors, which can be individually nanopositioned, and give sharp resonant modes in the red/near-infrared region of the spectrum. With the dye layer favorably placed, anticrossing behavior is observed as the cavity modes are successively swept through the absorption resonance. Large Rabi splittings of up to 170 meV are achieved at room temperature, agreeing well with predictions from a transfer-matrix model. These strongly coupled microcavities pave the way for microelectromechanical systems-integrated microdevices with tailored nonlinear optical properties. © 2005 American Institute of Physics. fDOI: 10.1063/1.1850189g