The Connection of Polaritons and Vacuum Rabi Splitting

Polaritons, in particular microcavity exciton-polaritons, have attracted much attention in recent years, as the phenomena of Bose-Einstein condensation and superfluidity have been observed for these quasiparticles. While the basic physics of these systems is well understood, there has been confusion over the connection of these systems to other phenomena, namely the Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian, Rabi flopping, and the vacuum Rabi splitting of atoms in a cavity. This paper reviews the basic theory of polaritons and shows these connections explicitly.