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Physical Review Letters

Quantum Theory of Secondary Emission in Optically Excited Semiconductor Quantum Wells

M. Kira, F. Jahnke, S. W. Koch

Published Apr 26, 1999• 84 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A fully quantum mechanical theory for the secondary emission of semiconductor quantum wells is presented. The equations for the coupled coherent and incoherent light emission are derived. Numerical solutions reproduce coherent signatures in the photoluminescence which have been observed experimentally after resonant short-pulse excitation. Transient quadrature squeezing is predicted for the emitted light field.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.82.3544

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A fully quantum mechanical theory for the secondary emission of semiconductor quantum wells is presented. The equations for the coupled coherent and incoherent light emission are derived. Numerical solutions reproduce coherent signatures in the photoluminescence which have been observed experimentally after resonant short-pulse excitation. Transient quadrature squeezing is predicted for the emitted light field.
Summary form only given. The light emission of optically excited quantum well excitons can be divided into two parts: the nonscattered contribution (primary emission, where the momentum of the photon is conserved) and the scattered one (secondary emission). Recent theoretical work was focused on isolated mechanisms for the generation of secondary emission, such as exciton-disorder (Rayleigh signal), exciton-phonon and exciton-photon interactions. In extension of these studies, we treat a more general situation by studying the simultaneous action of several emission generating mechanisms for the ease of 1s-exciton excitation in the low density case. The theoretical approach is based on a coupled set of Heisenberg equations of motion for quantum correlation functions of excitons, photons, phonons and their assisted density matrices in a disordered system using 2nd order Born and Markovian approximation. First, we illustrate the procedure and numerical results for a coupled system of excitons, phonons and photons in an ordered quantum well.
Using a novel technique, we simultaneously study the femtosecond dynamics of the amplitude and the coherence of resonant secondary emission from GaAs quantum wells. Two phase-locked pulses resonantly excite excitons in the semiconductor and the subsequently emitted radiation is detected by femtosecond up-conversion. In experiments at various delays and phases between the excitation pulses we identify three different contributions to the secondary emission with different coherence properties in time.
We present a bosonic description of excitons created by means of resonant optical pumping in a quantum well in the presence of a weak disorder potential. The excitonic collective state is a Glauber coherent state, closely related to that of photons but substantially different from that of few-level models. The theory, applying to the low-density regime, is used to explain various transient linear optical experiments involving resonantly excited excitons in GaAs quantum wells. In particular, we consider coherent control of the exciton density and spin, resonant Rayleigh scattering and scattering coherent control. Our quantum mechanical approach for light emission shows that excitonic secondary emission has a coherent component, in agreement with experiments.