Optical Stark Shift in Quantum Wells

Kuochou Tai, W. T. Tsang, John Hegarty

G. Papageorgion, Rama Chari, Ajoy Kumar Kar +4 more

Michael E. Donovan, Axel Schülzgen, J. Lee +9 more

We report the experimental observation of coherently coupled heavy-hole-light-hole Stark shifts, i.e., light-hole exciton shifts under heavy-hole exciton pumping conditions, in InGaAs quantum wells. The theoretical analysis of the data is based on a full many-body approach (dynamics-controlled truncation formalism) in the third-order nonlinear optical regime. It is shown that the Stark shift data can be interpreted as strong evidence of suitably defined nonradiative intervalence band coherences in a semiconductor quantum well. Hence, the observations establish a semiconductor analog of Raman coherences in three-level atoms.

Michael E. Donovan, Axel Schülzgen, J. Lee +9 more

I. Rumyantsev, N. H. Kwong, Ryu Takayama +1 more

A theoretical study of the coherently coupled heavy-hole--light-hole optical Stark effect in semiconductor quantum wells is presented. Based on a detailed investigation of the various many-body contributions to the Stark shifts, we identify a parameter regime in which the existence of intervalence band coherences (analogous to the nonradiative Raman coherence in three-level atoms) can be inferred from the coherently coupled heavy-hole--light-hole excitonic optical Stark shift. The analysis is performed for the third-order nonlinear optical regime $({\ensuremath{\chi}}^{3}$ regime), and is based on the dynamics-controlled truncation (DCT) formalism. It includes the relevant optical selection rules, excitonic and two-exciton-correlation (e.g., biexcitonic) effects.

Fanyao Qu, P.C. Morais