Photon lasing in a GaAs microcavity: similarities with a polariton condensate

Abstract: We study experimentally the lasing regime of a GaAs based microcavity sample under strong optical pumping. The very same sample exhibits the strong coupling regime at low excitation power with a Rabi splitting as large as 15 meV. We show that some features which may be considered as experimental evidence of polariton Bose Einstein condensation are also observed in the weak coupling regime when the cavity is behaving as a regular photon laser. In particular, the emission pattern in the lasing regime displays a sharp peak near the energy minimum followed by a Boltzmann distribution at higher energies.