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Physical Review Letters

Two-dimensional carrier-carrier screening in a quantum well

J.‐Y. Bigot, Marcia Tereza Portella, Robert W. Schoenlein, J. E. Cunningham, Charles V. Shank

Published Jul 29, 1991• 118 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The behavior of carrier-carrier screening is investigated in a GaAs-GaAlAs quantum-well structure by measuring the band-to-band polarization dephasing with femtosecond photon echoes. The variation of the electron-hole-polarization dephasing time with the carrier concentration reveals the two-dimensional character of the short-range screening between the interacting carriers.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.67.636

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Physical review. B, Condensed matter•Jun 15, 1994•21 citations
The behavior of carrier-carrier screening is investigated in a GaAs-GaAlAs quantum-well structure by measuring the band-to-band polarization dephasing with femtosecond photon echoes. The variation of the electron-hole-polarization dephasing time with the carrier concentration reveals the two-dimensional character of the short-range screening between the interacting carriers.
We report the first observation of femtosecond photon echoes from the band-to-band transitions in a bulk semiconductor. The time decay of the echo, found to vary from 3.5 to 11 fs, has allowed us to determine the polarization dephasing rate in GaAs. This rate was found to depend on the carrier density in the experimental range covered, 1.5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}1017{10}^{17}1017 to 7\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}1018{10}^{18}1018 ${\mathrm{cm}}^{\ensuremath{-}3}$, indicating the dominance of carrier-carrier scattering as the principal dephasing mechanism. The observed functional dependence of the dephasing rate on the carrier density has yielded previously unavailable information on Coulomb screening in a nonequilibrium carrier distribution.
The dynamical spectral-hole-burning effect, due to selective saturation of the optically coupled states, has been observed in the femto-second regime in a GaAs/AlGaAs multiple quantum well structure. Comparison with previous results on bulk GaAs under similar excitation conditions shows that carrier-carrier collisions are about twice as efficient in the quantum wells, due to the reduction of screening efficiency in two-dimensional structures, as well as the increase of band-gap renormalization with respect to the bulk material.
We report femtosecond photon echo and four-wave mixing measurements performed on GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure at room temperature. In femtosecond photon echo experiment the dephasing time was obtained, found to vary between 40 and 55 fs depending on carrier density. The dependence showed a power-law behavior T 2 ∝ N -0.22 , which indicates that major phase coherence loss is due to screened Coulomb electron-electron interaction. Transient grating experiments yielded the electron diffusion coefficient value of 200 cm 2 /s and electron relaxation time equal to 3 ns.
The polarization dephasing time has been measured across the gain region, at the transparency point, and into the absorption region of an optically excited GaAs multiple-quantum-well sample using spectral hole burning and degenerate four-wave mixing techniques. We observe strongly energy-dependent dephasing rates with a minimum at the crossover from gain to absorption. Numerical results for the microscopically calculated carrier-carrier scattering rates for a two-component electron-hole plasma in quantum wells show fair agreement with the experimental findings.
We have studied picosecond two-pulse degenerate four-wave mixing in GaAs/AlAs quantum wells under different polarization configurations of the two pump beams and the analyzed optical polarization. We observe two components, a prompt free polarization decay (FPD) and a delayed photon echo (PE), which show different polarization rules and dephasing times. The observed polarization rules are consistently explained in a theoretical model. Within this model, the two-component behavior is a direct consequence of short-range disorder. The PE dephasing rate is associated with the homogeneous broadening of the excitons while the FPD corresponds to the total dephasing rate, consisting of the homogeneous and inhomogeneous (short-range and long-range) broadenings.