Optical bistability and laserlike emission in a semiconductor microcavity

We report the experimental observation of hysteresis in the optical response of a semiconductor microcavity under normal mode coupling regime. A third resonance mode, spectrally lying at the bare cavity mode frequency, suddenly appears in the reflectivity and resonant Rayleigh scattering spectra when increasing the excitation power, resulting in a coexistence of three resonance modes. Bistability loops in both microcavity optical response are found at the energy of this third mode. Associated to the bistability, laserlike emission occurs at the bare cavity mode.