We study analytically the characteristics of optical absorption and slow-light solitons in an asymmetrical four-level N configuration semiconductor quantum wells with the cross-coupling relaxation of longitudinal-optical phonons (CCRLOP). It is shown that, in the linear range, the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) depends on the coherence control of both the optical fields and the CCRLOP. A double EIT is obtained under a relatively strong optical field which is from the hole and antibonding states in the wide well. Especially, the double EIT becomes perfect under the condition of increasing the CCRLOP. In the nonlinear range, the CCRLOP has an important effect on both the amplitude and the group velocity of the solitons. The amplitude of solitons reveals parabolic changes which obtain a maximum value with the increase of CCRLOP. The group velocity of the solitons continuously slows down if there are fixed three-photon detunings. These results may have potential applications for all-optical switching and some optical information engineering in solid systems.
We study analytically the characteristics of optical absorption and slow-light solitons in an asymmetrical four-level N configuration semiconductor quantum wells with the cross-coupling relaxation of longitudinal-optical phonons (CCRLOP). It is shown that, in the linear range, the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) depends on the coherence control of both the optical fields and the CCRLOP. A double EIT is obtained under a relatively strong optical field which is from the hole and antibonding states in the wide well. Especially, the double EIT becomes perfect under the condition of increasing the CCRLOP. In the nonlinear range, the CCRLOP has an important effect on both the amplitude and the group velocity of the solitons. The amplitude of solitons reveals parabolic changes which obtain a maximum value with the increase of CCRLOP. The group velocity of the solitons continuously slows down if there are fixed three-photon detunings. These results may have potential applications for all-optical switching and some optical information engineering in solid systems.
We study analytically the characteristics of optical absorption and slow-light solitons in an asymmetrical four-level N configuration semiconductor quantum wells with the cross-coupling relaxation of longitudinal-optical phonons (CCRLOP). It is shown that, in the linear range, the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) depends on the coherence control of both the optical fields and the CCRLOP. A double EIT is obtained under a relatively strong optical field which is from the hole and antibonding states in the wide well. Especially, the double EIT becomes perfect under the condition of increasing the CCRLOP. In the nonlinear range, the CCRLOP has an important effect on both the amplitude and the group velocity of the solitons. The amplitude of solitons reveals parabolic changes which obtain a maximum value with the increase of CCRLOP. The group velocity of the solitons continuously slows down if there are fixed three-photon detunings. These results may have potential applications for all-optical switching and some optical information engineering in solid systems.
In the past few years, with developing the technology of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) and improving the semiconductor technology, it has become possible to realize the application of optical soliton to communication device. Studies show the reduction of group velocity of the optical soliton in EIT medium under weak driving condition, which possibly realizes the storing of optical pulses in information storage. More importantly, semiconductor quantum wells have the inherent advantages such as large electric dipole moments of the transitions, high nonlinear optical coefficients, small size, easily operating and integrating. So it is considered to be the most potential EIT medium to realize the application of quantum devices. The optical soliton behavior in the semiconductor quantum well is studied, which can provide a certain reference value for the practical application of information transmission and processing together quantum devices. Although there has been a series of researches on both linear and nonlinear optical properties in semiconductor quantum wells structures, few publications report the effects of the cross-coupling longitude-optical phonon (CCLOP) relaxation on its linear and nonlinear optical properties. However, to our knowledge, the electron-longitude-optical phonon scattering rate can be realized experimentally by varying the sub-picosecond range to the order of a picosecond. According to this, we in the paper study the effects of the CCLOP relaxation on its linear and nonlinear optical properties in a cascade-type three-level EIT semiconductor quantum well. According to the current experimental conditions, we first propose a cascade-type three-level EIT semiconductor quantum well model. And in this model we consider the longitudinal optical phonons coupling between the bond state and anti-bond state. Subsequently, by using the multiple-scale method, we analytically study the dynamical properties of solitons in the cascade-type three-level EIT semiconductor quantum well with the CCRLOP. It is shown that when the CCRLOP strength is smaller, there exhibits the dark soliton in the EIT semiconductor quantum well. Only if the strength of the CCRLOP is larger, will in the system there exists bright soliton. That is to say, with increasing the strength of the CCRLOP, the soliton type of the system is converted from dark to bright soliton little by little. So, the temporal soliton type can be effectively controlled by the strength of the CCRLOP. In addition, we also find that the group velocity of the soliton can also be controlled by the strength of CCRLOP and the control light. These results may provide a theoretical basis for manipulating experimentally the dynamics of soliton in semiconductor quantum wells.
Abstract In this article, we present an alternative excitation scheme for the study of optical responses of the probe field in a five-level semiconductor coupled quantum wells (CQWs). It is shown that in the linear case, our study reveals the formation of double and triple electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) windows for the suitable values of Rabi-frequency of the control fields, while the linear dispersion is also tuned from anomalous to normal and vice versa within small range of detuning. Interestingly, we find that by properly adjusting the appropriate values of control field detunings, the behaviour of optical absorption and transparency is found to be asymmetric in nature. In addition, we also found that due to quantum coherence, nonlinear dispersion, specifically Kerr nonlinearity is dramatically enhanced with nearly vanishing linear absorption under EIT. The Kerr nonlinearity in the present scheme is identified to be very large (∼10−13m2V−2) in the mid IR range (λp=4.74μm), which can be very useful for the investigation of several nonlinear phenomena at low light intensity in CQWs. The results of the investigations may have potential applications in optical switching devices at low powers, quantum information processing and many more in solid-state laser based system.
We propose and analyze an efficient scheme for suppressing the absorption of a weak probe field based on intersubband transitions in a four-level asymmetric coupled-quantum well (CQW) driven coherently by a probe laser field and a control laser field. By using the numerical simulation, we find that the magnitude of the transient absorption of the probe field is smaller than the three-level system based on the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) at line center of the probe transition, moreover, comparing with the scheme in three-level asymmetric double QW system, the transparency hole of the present work is much broader. By analyzing the steady-state process analytically and numerically, our results show that the probe absorption can be completely eliminated under the condition of Raman resonance (i.e. two-photon detuning is zero). Besides, we can observe one transparency window without requiring one- or two-photon detuning exactly vanish. This investigation may provide the possible scheme for EIT in solids by using CQW.
Soliton, which can travel over long distance without attenuation or shape change due to the balance of the interplay between dispersion (or diffraction) and nonlinearity in nonlinear medium, becomes a good information carrier in quantum information processing and transmission. Up to now, the study on the optical solitons mainly focuses on ultra-cold atomic electromagnetic induction transparency (EIT) medium. This is mainly because ultra-cold atomic system can generate strong nonlinear effect under low light excitation. However, for the practical application, it is a big challenge to control accurately the optical soliton dynamics in the atomic EIT medium due to its low temperature (which approaches to absolute zero) and rarefaction. Fortunately, with the maturity of semiconductor quantum production technology, quantum dots have extensive application prospect in quantum information processing and transmission. So, in the paper, we study the optical soliton dynamics in a four-level asymmetric array-type three-quantum-dot EIT medium. Based on the current experimental results, we first propose a four-level asymmetric array-type three-quantum-dot EIT model. Subsequently, by using amplitude variable approach combined with multi-scale method, we study analytically the propagation of a probe pulse in this system. It is shown that when one (the another) inter-dot tunneling coupling is turned on (off), only a single transparency window appears in the center range of the probe field detuning. Only if two inter-dot tunneling couplings are turned on will two transparent windows be distributed on both sides of the central region of the probe field detuning. And the width of the single transparent window or the widths of two transparent windows become wider with the strength of the inter-dot tunneling coupling increasing. For the nonlinear case, by choosing appropriate parameters in the area of the transparency window, the stable propagation of soliton can be realized. Interestingly, we find that the strength of the inter-dot tunneling coupling has an important effect on the soliton dynamic behaviors. In the case that one (the another) inter-dot tunneling coupling is turned on (off), with the increase of strength of the inter-dot tunneling coupling, the velocity of the soliton exhibits a trend of first increasing and then decreasing, and the amplitude of the soliton presents a increasing trend for ever. For the case that two inter-dot tunneling couplings are turned on, with the strength of the two inter-dot tunneling coupling increasing, the velocity of the soliton presents a decreasing trend for ever, while the amplitude of the soliton exhibits a trend of first decreasing and then increasing. Thus, the amplitude modulation effect of optical soliton can be realized in semiconductor quantum dot devices.
We have studied nonlinear quantum optical effects in a doubly driven four-level atomic system in a homogeneously broadened regime. On application of two strong fields the system can be made to display double electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) because of constructive quantum interference giving rise to nonlinear absorption at three-photon resonance condition. This fact may be used to obtain other phenomena like the effect of photon switching in a pulsed regime and large cross phase modulation (XPM) effect. We also show that the behaviour of spatial modulation of transparency of the weak probe beam in a three-level system interacted with a strong standing wave pump field can be dramatically changed in our four-level ladder type system. Here, strong coupling field acting on the uppermost transition is represented by a standing wave whereas strong pump and weak probe fields acting successively on the lower transitions are represented by travelling waves. The effect of double EIT on nonlinear light generation based on the four-wave-mixing (FWM) technique is also investigated. We have examined that the four wave mixing efficiency can be effectively controlled by varying the strength of the pump field.