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Physical review. B, Condensed matter

Photon echo induced by two-exciton coherence in a GaAs quantum well

Takanao Saiki, Makoto Kuwata‐Gonokami, T. Matsusue, H. Sakaki

Published Mar 15, 1994• 73 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Excitonic nonlinearities in the weak-excitation limit condition are examined with time-integrated and time-resolved four-wave mixing (FWM). Below an excitation of 3\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}${10}^{9}$ excitons/${\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$, coherent third-order processes prevail. Echo-type signals are observed in parallel and perpendicular polarization configurations. The coherent process induced by the two-photon coherence of the two-exciton state is attributable to signals in the perpendicular configuration. The polarization dependences of a temporal profile and the intensity of FWM signals are well explained with third-order perturbational analysis that takes into account the two-exciton states and inhomogeneity.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.49.7817

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Summary form only given.The coherent response of excitons in semiconductor nanostructures, as measured in four wave mixing (FWM) experiments, depends strongly on the inhomogeneous broadening of the exciton transition. We investigate GaAs-AlGaAs single quantum wells (SQW) of 4 nm to 25 nm well width. Two main mechanisms are found to be important. First, the excitation-induced dephasing FWM signal (EID), which leads to a strong dependence of the signal on the angle between the linear input polarizations. The presence of the EID in the mainly homogeneously broadened sample (25 nm) is shown by the beating between EID and two-photon coherence (TPC) at the exciton for negative delay and co-linear polarized excitation. It vanishes for cross-polarized excitation, thus excluding the importance of local-field effects.