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physica status solidi (b)

Nonlinear Absorption in III—V Semiconductors

Pratima Sen

Published Jul 1, 1984• 14 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract A coherent radiation‐exciton interaction model is employed to study analytically the phenomenon of nonlinear absorption in important III—V semiconductors (viz., GaAs, GaSb, InSb, InAs), the crystals being irradiated by suitable lasers with energies (hω) nearly equal to the band gap energies (hωg). The nonoptical processesare accounted for phenomenologically by introducing a damping parameter into the equation of motion of the probability amplitude of the excited electron—hole pair state. The Wannier‐Mott type of exciton wave function is found to be responsible for the giant nonlinearity of the crystal absorption coefficient in the near resonant optical interband transition regime with h | ω ‐ ωg | of the order of the crystal exciton binding energy. The effect of renormalization of the crystal band gap in the presence of Coulomb interaction and Starkbroadening is also discussed.

DOI
10.1002/pssb.2221240113

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Abstract A coherent radiation‐exciton interaction model is employed to study analytically the phenomenon of nonlinear absorption in important III—V semiconductors (viz., GaAs, GaSb, InSb, InAs), the crystals being irradiated by suitable lasers with energies (hω) nearly equal to the band gap energies (hωg). The nonoptical processesare accounted for phenomenologically by introducing a damping parameter into the equation of motion of the probability amplitude of the excited electron—hole pair state. The Wannier‐Mott type of exciton wave function is found to be responsible for the giant nonlinearity of the crystal absorption coefficient in the near resonant optical interband transition regime with h | ω ‐ ωg | of the order of the crystal exciton binding energy. The effect of renormalization of the crystal band gap in the presence of Coulomb interaction and Starkbroadening is also discussed.
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Starting from a Hamiltonian which describes the interaction of the many-electron system of a crystal with the quantized light field, we derive nonlinear coupled equations of motion for the light-field amplitude, the electron-hole-pair amplitude, and the inversion. These equations yield the basis for the investigation of space-dependent nonlinear interaction effects between light and electrons in direct band-to-band transitions. With the aid of these equations we investigate the saturation behavior of direct band-to-band transitions for an incident monochromatic electromagnetic plane wave. We determine the nonlinear absorption coefficient and nonlinear refractive index. We compute the nonlinear transmissivity taking into account the boundary conditions at the end faces of the crystal and discuss the effect of optical bistability.
In semiconductors the attractive Coulomb interaction between electrons and holes causes one- and two-photon resonances, known as excitons and exciton molecules, respectively. Large nonlinearities are observed in the spectral vicinity of these resonances. These nonlinearties are well-suited for the realization of optical bistability1),2),3) as has been demonstrated by Gibbs et al. 1)for GaAs and by Miller et al.2) for InSb. The electron-hole correlations, the screening and the energy renormalization are most conveniently calculated by the Green's function formalism. The optical dielectric function can be expressed in terms of the retarded photon self-energy which is also called the polarization function. This connection is not restricted to the linear response regime.
Using a coherent radiation-semiconductor interaction model based upon the time dependent perturbation technique, the occurrence of optical nutation has been analytically investigated in direct-gap semiconductors such as GaAs, GaSb, InAs, and Hg1-xCdxTe, duly irradiated by near resonant laser beams. The present approach is much more simplified and straightforward than the conventional Maxwell-Bloch approach used so far for the study of coherent optical transient effects in molecular and atomic systems. The dispersion and absorption expressed in terms of the real and imaginary parts of the crystal optical susceptibility\chi_{r}and\chi_{i}exhibit temporally damped ringing behavior of Neumann and Bessel types, respectively. These processes have been identified as dispersive and absorptive optical nutation. The theory is developed for arbitrary laser intensity in presence of damping due to nonoptical processes. To understand the mechanisms of dispersive and absorptive optical nutation, we have restricted only to low-power resonant band-to-band transitions neglecting excitonic and damping effects. While studying analytically the transient behavior of\chi_{r}and\chi_{i}for a given pump field strength, it is noticed that the absorptive component exhibit remarkable qualitative agreement with the experimental observations of optical nutation in13CH3F.