Electrodynamics of the band-edge in a direct gap semiconductor

M. Wegener

V. M. Axt, A. Stahl

J. D. Fan, Y. M. Malozovsky, Diola Bagayoko

Indrani Majumdar, Pranay K. Sen

Based upon the time dependent perturbation theory for coherent radiation-semiconductor interaction, the possibility of occurrence of the phenomenon of two-pulse photon echo has been investigated analytically in a bulk direct-gap semiconductor under near resonant transition regime below the absorption edge of the crystal. The excitation intensity is chosen to be in the low-to-moderate power regime such that the photoinduced electron-hole pair density remains below the Mott transition limit and the weakly bound Wannier-Mott excitonic structure of the crystal absorption edge is manifested. The band gap renormalization effect is also taken into account. Numerical estimation of the transmitted intensity has been made for electron-hole transition to the 1s excitonic states in the bulk CdS crystal. The analytical results demonstrate the occurrence of photon echo in direct-gap semiconductors.

Stephan W. Koch, Nasser N. Peyghambarian, H. M. Gibbs

Nonlinear optical properties of laser-excited semiconductors are discussed, and the applications to optical bistability and optical logic are reviewed. The physical origin of the nonlinearities is analyzed in terms of the many-body interactions in the system of electron-hole pairs, causing effects such as plasma screening of the Coulomb interaction, band-gap renormalization, and band filling. Theoretical results for absorption and refractive-index spectra are compared to experimental data obtained for room-temperature GaAs and other semiconductors. The experimental and theoretical results for dispersive optical bistability in semiconductors are summarized, and recent experiments on optical logic gating and pattern recognition are discussed.

Claus F. Klingshirn, Klaus M. Bohnert, H. Kalt +1 more