Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE
Spin-diffracted four-wave mixing measurements of exciton spin relaxation and population transfer to dark states
S. Adachi, Suguru Maki, Osamu Ikeuchi, Hirotaka Sasakura, Shunichi Muto
Abstract
We have observed the exciton spin relaxation processes in GaAs quantum wells at low temperatures by three-pulse spin-diffracted four-wave mixing measurements. After investigating the merits and demerits of this new method as compared with the pump-probe technique, we discuss the population transfer to the dark states through the measurements of the excitation-power dependence of exciton spin relaxation. Spin-diffracted four-wave mixing method is a powerful tool to investigate exciton spin dynamical processes where the pump-probe and time-resolved photoluminescence measurements have been used so far, since the method can be used in reflection geometry and be applicable to thin films and quantum dots.