ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to give a review of the main concepts and principal experimental results on semiconductor microcavities in the strong coupling regime. Atomic single-mode interactions in the strong coupling regime were first achieved using Rydberg transitions in the microwave region of the spectrum, and more recently have been achieved using optical transitions. The assumption that the absorption spectrum in bare quantum wells is coincident with the energy distribution of the excitons amounts to an assumption that the excitonic states are localised. The chapter reviews the basic-quantum mechanical model for two-level atoms in a single-mode cavity and its relation to classical linear dispersion theory. Tests of fundamental issues in quantum optics such as quantum measurement theory become possible when the coupled atom-cavity system is in the strong coupling regime and the average number of atoms in the cavity is one.
