Polariton-polariton interaction beyond the Born approximation: A toy model study

Abstract: We theoretically investigate the polariton-polariton interaction in microcavities beyond the commonly used Born approximation (i.e., mean-field), by adopting a toy model with a contact interaction to approximately describe the attraction between electrons and holes in quantum well and by using a Gaussian pair fluctuation theory beyond mean-field. We obtain a density or chemical potential independent polariton-polariton interaction strength even in two-dimensions, which result from coupling to the photon field. We show that quantum fluctuations lead to about a factor of two reduction in the polariton-polariton interaction strength within our toy model. Together with corrections to the 1s exciton approximation at very strong light-matter coupling, we find the polariton-polariton interaction strength under typical experimental conditions is overestimated by a factor three in the widely used theories, if our toy model can qualitatively simulate the polariton interaction in GaAs quantum wells. We compare our prediction with the most recent measurement and argue that the beyond-Born-approximation effect to the polariton-polariton interaction strength is crucial for a quantitative understanding of the experimental data by E. Estrecho \textit{et al.}, Phys. Rev. B \textbf{100}, 035306 (2019).