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Applied Physics Letters

Coherent nonlinear propagation of ultrafast electric field transients through intersubband resonances

Felix T. Eickemeyer, Michael Woerner, Andrew M. Weiner, Thomas Elsaesser, R. Hey, Klaus Ploog

Published Jul 9, 2001• 28 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Amplitude and phase-controlled midinfrared field transients at a wavelength of 12.5 μm induce resonant intersubband excitations in n-type modulation-doped GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells. The transmitted electric field transients are directly measured by ultrafast electro-optic sampling. Coherent control of intersubband excitations is demonstrated by applying two phase-locked pulses with variable relative phase. A coherent nonlinear response corresponding to partial Rabi flops of up to 60° in the Bloch sphere is observed with excitation pulses of only 1 pJ energy.

DOI
10.1063/1.1384898

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Applied Physics Letters•Dec 29, 2003•34 citations
Amplitude and phase-controlled midinfrared field transients at a wavelength of 12.5 μm induce resonant intersubband excitations in n-type modulation-doped GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells. The transmitted electric field transients are directly measured by ultrafast electro-optic sampling. Coherent control of intersubband excitations is demonstrated by applying two phase-locked pulses with variable relative phase. A coherent nonlinear response corresponding to partial Rabi flops of up to 60° in the Bloch sphere is observed with excitation pulses of only 1 pJ energy.
Radiative coupling of resonantly excited intersubband transitions in GaAs∕AlGaAs\mathrm{Ga}\mathrm{As}∕\mathrm{Al}\mathrm{Ga}\mathrm{As}GaAs∕AlGaAs multiple quantum wells can have a strong impact on the coherent nonlinear optical response, as is shown by phase and amplitude resolved propagation studies of ultrashort electric field transients. Upon increasing the driving field amplitude, strong radiative coupling leads to a pronounced self-induced absorption, followed by a bleaching due to the onset of delayed Rabi oscillations. A many-particle theory including light propagation effects accounts fully for the experimental results.
We analyze the optical modulation of an interband resonant light pulse by intersubband resonant light pulses in a three-level quantum well system. The origin of the third order self-saturation optical nonlinearity resulting in the modification of the interband light absorption is assumed to lie in the carrier density modulation induced by the interband and intersubband transitions. The optical nonlinearity can be optimized to achieve the maximum modulation by applying control light pulses shorter than the intersubband energy relaxation time but longer than the intersubband phase relaxation time. We have also experimentally investigated the material system suitable for optical communication regime and have observed that the In0.53Ga0.47As/AlAs0.56Sb0.44 quantum well lattice matched to InP yielding an intersubband transition as short as 1.4 μm is the most suitable system for the proposed modulation scheme.
The optimum condition for achieving highly efficient ultrafast all-optical pulse modulation by modification of the absorption of a pulsed interband light field by ultrasubband control-light pulses in a doped quantum well is investigated. The modulation efficiency in the femtosecond domain can be maximized by an intersubband control light with a pulse width (200 fs) that is comparable with the phase-relaxation time of the system and an intensity that is close to the intersubband saturation intensity.
We report the measurement of the transient intersubband absorption in a coupled quantum well semiconductor structure. Pulsed interband excitation is used to prepare a coherent population in the two lowest states of a three level system of electronic subbands. The time-dependent absorption to the upper state is probed by midinfrared time-domain spectroscopy. For certain pump–probe delay times we observe in the intersubband absorption spectra typical signatures of quantum interference: regions with reduced or enhanced absorption.