Resonance Rayleigh scattering and radiative coupling in periodic quantum well structures

Summary form only given. The lack of in-plane momentum conservation in the presence of structural disorder allows for radiative decay of the excitonic polarization in nonspecular directions. Since this resonance Rayleigh scattering (RRS) signal carries the imprint of the underlying disorder potential an analysis of the disorder properties of real samples can be performed. While RRS signals of anti-reflection coated single quantum wells (SQW's) are completely determined by disorder, excitons in multiple quantum well (MQW) systems are subject to polaritonic renormalizations leading to considerable spectral and temporal modifications of the secondary emission. In certain cases the RRS signals can even be dominated by radiative coupling effects. We analyzed a variety of systems with different relative importance of radiative coupling. As an example of a pronounced light-coupled system, we studied theoretically and experimentally an N = 100 MQW sample.