Dephasing of exciton polaritons in photoexcited InGaAs quantum dots in GaAs nanocavities

We present a combined experimental and theoretical study of the emission spectrum of zero dimensional nanocavity polaritons in electrically tunable single dot nanocavities. Such devices allow us to vary the dot-cavity detuning in situ and probe the emission spectrum under well-controlled conditions of lattice temperature and incoherent excitation level. Our results show that the observation of a double peak in the emission spectrum is not an unequivocal signature of strong coupling. Moreover, by comparing our results with theory, we extract the effective vacuum Rabi splitting, the pure dephasing rate, and their dependence on the incoherent optical pumping power and lattice temperature. Our study highlights how coupling to the lattice and dynamical fluctuations in the solid-state environment influence the coherence properties of quantum dot microcavity polaritons and, sometimes, may mask the occurrence of strong coupling.