Stochastic and deterministic switches in a bistable polariton micropillar under short optical pulses

Optical bistability of exciton polaritons in semiconductor microcavities is a promising platform for digital optical devices. Steady states of coherently driven polaritons can be toggled in tens of picoseconds by a short external pulse of appropriate amplitude and phase. We have analyzed the switching behavior of polaritons depending on the pulse amplitude, phase, and duration. The switches are found to change dramatically when the inverse pulse duration becomes comparable to the frequency detuning between the driving field and polariton resonance. If the detuning is large compared to the polariton linewidth, the system becomes extremely sensitive to initial conditions and thus can serve as a fast random-number generator.