We propose a novel physical mechanism for the creation of long-lived macroscopic exciton-photon qubits in semiconductor microcavities with embedded quantum wells in the strong coupling regime. The polariton qubit is a superposition of lower branch and upper branch exciton-polariton states. We argue that the coherence time of Rabi oscillations can be dramatically enhanced due to their stimulated pumping from a permanent thermal reservoir of polaritons. We discuss applications of such qubits for quantum information processing, cloning, and storage purposes.

• Received 14 January 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.196403