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Applied Physics Letters

Observation of anomalously large blue shift of the heavy-hole photocurrent peak and optical bistability in narrow asymmetric coupled quantum wells

Yujie J. Ding, C. L. Guo, S. Li, Jacob B. Khurgin, K.-K. Law, J. Stellato, Chiu Tai Law, A. E. Kaplan, L.A. Coldren

Published Aug 26, 1991• 13 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Blue shift of the heavy-hole peak of the photocurrent spectra has been observed, for the first time, in narrow GaAs/Al0.4Ga0.6As asymmetric coupled quantum wells near the heavy-hole resonance. With an external reverse bias of only −2.35 V, a maximum upward shift of the apparent peak position of ∼6.1 meV has been measured at 78 K. Sharp change of the inhomogeneous linewidth of the heavy-hole peak has also been observed. cw optical bistability has been observed with the external feedback.

DOI
10.1063/1.106333

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Blue shift of the heavy-hole peak of the photocurrent spectra has been observed, for the first time, in narrow GaAs/Al0.4Ga0.6As asymmetric coupled quantum wells near the heavy-hole resonance. With an external reverse bias of only −2.35 V, a maximum upward shift of the apparent peak position of ∼6.1 meV has been measured at 78 K. Sharp change of the inhomogeneous linewidth of the heavy-hole peak has also been observed. cw optical bistability has been observed with the external feedback.
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Optical nonlinearities of Al(x)Ga(1-x)As/GaAs asymmetric coupled quantum wells within a p-i-n structure have been observed by using time-resolved spectroscopy. Under photoexcitation, exciton absorption lines exhibit spectral shifts of as much as approximately 1 meV. The recovery times of these spectral shifts are of the order of hundreds of picoseconds when the excitation photon is above the lowest exciton state but become less than 10 psec when excitation is below the lowest exciton state, indicating a virtual process. The behavior of these spectral shifts is consistent with the presence of a polarization induced by optical pumping. The polarization is believed to be due to the excitons that have nonvanishing electric dipole moments along the axis of the asymmetric coupled quantum wells.
We present measurements of differential transmission and four-wave mixing in GaAs quantum well structures at 1.8 K near the inhomogeneously broadened lowest heavy-hole (hh1) exciton resonance using narrow band cw excitation. The data show an increase in absorption and an excitation lifetime of order 1–10 μs outside the spectral hole produced by the pump. The long lifetime and the experimentally determined absence of excitation spatial diffusion in this region suggests that optical absorption produces electron-hole pairs that are correlated but separately localized due to disorder. A phenomenological model is proposed to explain the nonlinear response based on two-photon absorption.