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Physical Review A

Line shape of time-resolved four-wave mixing

Martin Wegener, D. S. Chemla, Stefan Schmitt-Rink, Wilfried Schäfer

Published Nov 1, 1990• 376 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Time-resolved four-wave-mixing experiments are usually interpreted in terms of noninteracting two-level systems in order to obtain information on the polarization dephasing time ${\mathit{T}}_{2}$. Recent experiments involving excitonic resonances in semiconductor quantum wells (including results presented in this paper) show striking qualitative deviations from this simple picture. In particular, an exponential tail is observed at low excitation for negative time delays. At high excitation, the four-wave-mixing signal is found to evolve into two distinct temporal maxima. We demonstrate that the microscopic origin of this time dependence can be understood in terms of coherent exciton-exciton interactions. We show in fact that this behavior is more general and should be seen in numerous dense media where strong nonlinear interactions of polarizations occur. In addition to presenting rigorous numerical results, we analyze two simple situations in which such interactions exist: dielectric media with local-field effects and the anharmonic oscillator. We derive analytical expressions for their time-dependent four-wave-mixing response and discuss the physical origin of these new nonlinear-optical effects.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.42.5675

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Time-resolved four-wave-mixing experiments are usually interpreted in terms of noninteracting two-level systems in order to obtain information on the polarization dephasing time T2{\mathit{T}}_{2}T2​. Recent experiments involving excitonic resonances in semiconductor quantum wells (including results presented in this paper) show striking qualitative deviations from this simple picture. In particular, an exponential tail is observed at low excitation for negative time delays. At high excitation, the four-wave-mixing signal is found to evolve into two distinct temporal maxima. We demonstrate that the microscopic origin of this time dependence can be understood in terms of coherent exciton-exciton interactions. We show in fact that this behavior is more general and should be seen in numerous dense media where strong nonlinear interactions of polarizations occur. In addition to presenting rigorous numerical results, we analyze two simple situations in which such interactions exist: dielectric media with local-field effects and the anharmonic oscillator. We derive analytical expressions for their time-dependent four-wave-mixing response and discuss the physical origin of these new nonlinear-optical effects.
Coherent transient spectroscopy of semiconductor nanostructures has become an active field of research in recent years. Most such experiments are analyzed in terms of a simple two-level model in which the effects of interaction and induced fields are ignored. We discuss two very different cases where inclusion of these generally-neglected effects leads to large and important modification in the temporal response of the system. In the first case, interactions between excitons strongly modify the temporal response of four-wave-mixing (FWM) signals from quantum wells. This is the temporal analog of well-known effects in the spectral domain, such as bleaching of the exciton absorption and bandgap renormalization. In the second case, the shape of a low-intensity pulse is severely distorted after transmission through a typical quantum well sample. Interferometric measurements show that reradiation of induced polarization is responsible for the distortion. The distortion depends strongly on the dephasing time and has important implications for all time-resolved measurements. 1.
The polarization dependence of the ultrafast nonlinear response of localized excitons in GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells has been investigated by spectrally resolved, transient four-wave mixing. The role of the excitation-induced dephasing in the delay dependence of the signal is discussed in detail. In particular, we show experimentally that the excitation-induced dephasing gives rise to a photon echo in inhomogeneous systems. We develop a simple analytical model for the delay dependence of the signal, which enables us to deduce the dephasing time from the four-wave mixing decay.
In recent years, transient four-wave mixing (FWM) techniques have been used to investigate the dephasing times of non-equilibrium carriers in semiconductor heterostructures by monitoring the decay of the macroscopic polarization. Initially, this decay was measured by temporally-integrating the scattered FWM signal as a function of time delay between two (or more) pump pulses. More recently, the macroscopic polarization decay has been measured by time-resolving the FWM signal by cross correlating it with an ultrashort laser pulse via frequency up-conversion in a nonlinear crystal. When excitons with slightly different energies are excited, oscillations (or beats) have been observed both in the time-integrated FWM signal and in the time-resolved FWM signal. Such beats have been observed, for example, between light- and heavy-hole excitons and between excitons in wells of different widths. Both the spectral behavior1 of the time-integrated FWM signal and the temporal behavior2 of the time-resolved signal have been shown to allow the distinction between the polarization interference associated with two independent oscillators and the quantum beats associated with two coupled oscillators which share a common level. In addition, it has been demonstrated3 that the quantum beats produced by incident pulses with parallel polarizations are exactly out of phase (by π) with the beats produced by orthogonally polarized pulses. In each case1-3, the period and phase of the beats and the polarization of FWM signal were explained by using a six-level model, which excluded many-body effects, to describe the J=1/2 conduction and J=3/2 valence states. Within the last few months, however, it has been shown that a complete description of the polarization selection rules for the FWM signal requires excitation-induced dephasing4 or disorder-induced coupling of the σ + and σ – excitonic transitions5.
We show that four-wave mixing in optically dense media is very different than in an optically thin medium. In time-resolved degenerate four-wave mixing we experimentally observe ``negative'' time delay response, fast decay rates at short delay times, and broad shoulders at long delays. The observations are explained very well in terms of pulse propagation effects, and a theoretical framework is presented for the analysis of the nonlinear interaction. We treat both the incident and generated fields self-consistently, and solve for the interaction of short pulses with a resonantly absorbing medium. The implications for the extraction of relaxation rates from four-wave-mixing experiments involving ultrashort pulses in optically dense matter are discussed.