physica status solidi (b)
Excitonic Molecules in Nonlinear Optical Response
Leonid V. Keldysh
Abstract
Abstract A model which allows to treat self‐consistently many‐body exciton effects, including biexciton formation, is proposed for the theoretical description of an excitonic polarization induced by an intense electromagnetic field. In the presence of a pump field the normal spectrum of electromagnetic waves in the vicinity of the nonlinear biexciton resonance is shown to be composed of four polariton branches, where each is the superposition of two photons and two excitons. In the self‐consistent field approximation, the structure of the interconnected, strongly nonlinear exciton and biexciton resonances is studied, including optical Stark shift, multistable behaviour, etc. For a certain range of the exciton interaction parameters at sufficiently strong pump wave the system of excitons and excitonic molecules transforms abruptly to a dense coherent electron–hole “liquid”. Appearance and temporary evolution of an exciton–biexciton system after switching on a pump is also considered.