Novel experimental techniques have provided a unique opportunity to study the effects of disorder in semiconductor nanostructures through isolating the component of resonant secondary emission that exists solely due to disorder-resonant Rayleigh scattering (RRS). While for quantum wells (QW) these opportunities have already led to new physical insight, the first experiments on RRS from microcavities (MC) with embedded QW still await theoretical developments. So far no theory has been able to provide detailed understanding of the complicated process of RRS from MC in the normal-mode coupling regime. We present a resolution of this problem by developing a novel microscopic theory that gives a qualitative and quantitative description of the spectral, temporal, and angular properties of MC RRS. A physical picture provided by this theory is thoroughly tested and verified by our ultrafast interferometric experiments. Using many-body techniques, we calculate self-consistently the disorder-averaged two-particle photon propagator and arrive at the expression for the RRS spectrum due to impulsive MC excitation.
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