Physics of the Solid State
Reflection and absorption of light by a quantum well in a strong magnetic field under pulsed irradiation
I. G. Lang, L. I. Korovin, David Armando Contreras-Solorio, S. T. Pavlov
Abstract
The interaction between a quantum well with a large number of equidistant excited electron energy levels and light is investigated. It is shown that nonsinusoidal oscillations occur in the transmitted, reflected, and absorbed energy fluxes under exposure of the quantum well to irradiation with light pulses. For long pulses whose length γ l −1 is one order of magnitude longer than the time ℏ/ΔE (where ΔE is the energy level spacing), the oscillation amplitude is small. In the case of narrow pulses when γ l −1 ≤ℏ/ΔE, the oscillation amplitude is comparable to the flux magnitudes. For very narrow pulses with , the decaying echo of exciting pulse should be observed at the time intervals 2πℏ/ΔE. Symmetric and asymmetric pulses are considered. The theory is applicable to narrow quantum wells in a strong magnetic field when the equidistant levels correspond to electron-hole pairs with different Landau quantum numbers.