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Optics Letters

Optical Stark effect on excitons in GaAs quantum wells

A. Von Lehmen, D. S. Chemla, J. P. Heritage, Jane E. Zucker

Published Oct 1, 1986• 331 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We describe the first reported experimental observation of an extremely fast shift of the n = 1 exciton transition energy in GaAs quantum-well heterostructures. The shift is produced by optical pumping below the band gap and is not associated with a carrier or exciton population. We interpret the shift in terms of an optical Stark effect. We present a model for the Stark effect on the ground-state exciton in quantum wells and find good agreement between the predictions of the model and our experimental results.

DOI
10.1364/ol.11.000609

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We describe the first reported experimental observation of an extremely fast shift of the n = 1 exciton transition energy in GaAs quantum-well heterostructures. The shift is produced by optical pumping below the band gap and is not associated with a carrier or exciton population. We interpret the shift in terms of an optical Stark effect. We present a model for the Stark effect on the ground-state exciton in quantum wells and find good agreement between the predictions of the model and our experimental results.
Irradiation of a medium with non-resonant light leads to a shift of the energy levels in the system. This optical, or dynamical Stark effect has been studied for many years in atomic gases. It is only recently, however, that it could be detected for excitonic transitions in solids. This development has stirred considerable interest, because the optical Stark effect has inherent features which makes it well suited for applications such as in ultrafast all-optical data processing. Since the pump light beam falls in a transparency region of the medium, it experiences little loss, in contrast to optical non-linearities based on a saturation mechanism. Also, because virtual transitions are involved, the light-induced shift of exciton levels follows closely the pump pulse duration, making it possible to design ultrafast all-optical logic gates with subpicosecond switch-on and -off times.
The optical Stark effect of excitons in semiconductors, where the exciton resonance is blue shifted by an off-resonance light beam, has been actively studied. Here we report on the observation of a very fast recovery of the exciton bleaching for an off-resonance excitation condition in a quantum well sample at room temperature. The good agreement between the experimental results and our numerical calculations of the time-resolved absorption spectra suggests a coherent transient population buildup and decay occurring on the time scale of the pump pulse.
We report the first experimental study of the optical Stark effect in single semiconductor quantum dots (QD). For below band gap excitation, two-color pump-probe spectra show dispersive line shapes caused by a light-induced blueshift of the excitonic resonance. The line shape depends strongly on the excitation field strength and is determined by the pump-induced phase shift of the coherent QD polarization. Transient spectral oscillations can be understood as rotations of the QD polarization phase with negligible population change. Ultrafast control of the QD polarization is demonstrated.