We report on time-resolved photoluminescence from semiconductor microcavities showing that an optically controllable mechanism exists to turn on and off memory effects in a polariton system. By increasing the laser pumping pulse intensity we observe revivals of the decaying time-resolved photoluminescence signal, a manifestly non-Markovian behavior of the optically active polaritons. Based on an open quantum system approach we perform a comprehensive analytical and numerical study of the coupling of optically active polaritons to a structured reservoir to confirm the origin of the observed features. Our findings show that negative detunings and strong excitation should occur simultaneously for memory effects to take place.
@article{arxiv.0803.1159,
title = {Control of non-Markovian effects in the dynamics of polaritons in semiconductor microcavities},
author = {F. J. Rodriguez and L. Quiroga and C. Tejedor and M. D. Martin and L. Vina and R. Andre},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0803.1159},
year = {2009}
}