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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Exciton absorption in semiconductor quantum wells driven by a strong intersubband pump field

Ansheng Liu, Cun‐Zheng Ning

Published Mar 1, 2000• 24 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Optical interband excitonic absorption of semiconductor quantum wells (QW’s) driven by a coherent pump field is investigated on the basis of semiconductor Bloch equations. The pump field has a photon energy close to the intersubband spacing between the first two conduction subbands in the QW’s. An external weak optical field probes the interband transition. The excitonic effects and pump-induced population redistribution within the conduction subbands in the QW system are included. When the density of the electron–hole pairs in the QW structure is low, the pump field induces an Autler–Townes splitting of the exciton absorption spectrum. The split size and the peak positions of the absorption doublet depend not only on the pump frequency and intensity but also on the carrier density. As the density of the electron–hole pairs is increased, the split contrast (the ratio between the maximum and the minimum values) is decreased, because the exciton effect is suppressed at higher densities owing to the many-body screening.

DOI
10.1364/josab.17.000433

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Optical interband excitonic absorption of semiconductor quantum wells (QW’s) driven by a coherent pump field is investigated on the basis of semiconductor Bloch equations. The pump field has a photon energy close to the intersubband spacing between the first two conduction subbands in the QW’s. An external weak optical field probes the interband transition. The excitonic effects and pump-induced population redistribution within the conduction subbands in the QW system are included. When the density of the electron–hole pairs in the QW structure is low, the pump field induces an Autler–Townes splitting of the exciton absorption spectrum. The split size and the peak positions of the absorption doublet depend not only on the pump frequency and intensity but also on the carrier density. As the density of the electron–hole pairs is increased, the split contrast (the ratio between the maximum and the minimum values) is decreased, because the exciton effect is suppressed at higher densities owing to the many-body screening.
In a self-consistent field formalism we investigated the weak-probe optical intersubband response of a three-subband semiconductor quantum well pumped by a strong coherent laser beam. We showed that, when the pumping photon energy is somewhat above the energy separation between the two lowest subbands, a combination of hole-burning effects and coherent pump–probe wave interactions can lead to both optical gain without population inversion and an Autler–Townes-like doublet in the probe optical spectrum. These two absorption peaks, whose positions are blueshifted as the pump intensity is increased, are due to the two-photon absorption process and light-induced intersubband transitions between the two upper states. It is also demonstrated that, in a stepwise two-photon pumping scheme, the optical gain with population inversion can also occur in the quantum-well system when a modestly strong pump field is present.
When two electron conduction subbands in a doped quantum well are coupled by a coherent laser pumping, electromagnetically induced transparency and Rabi splitting in the interband absorption spectrum of a probe light are found for steady electron dressed states. The effect of light-electron interaction on electron and hole eigenenergies and states are calculated using a generalized density-functional approach. The change of absorption coefficient with the pump field amplitude is studied and explained.
An approach for solving the excitonic absorption in a semiconductor quantum well driven by an intense terahertz field is presented. The formalism relies on the stationary single-photon Schrodinger equation in the full quantum mechanical framework. The optical absorption dynamics in both weak and strong couplings are discussed and compared. The excitonic absorption spectra show the Autler—Townes doublets for the resonance terahertz field, a replica peak for the non-resonance terahertz field, and the electromagnetically induced transparency phenomenon for modulating the decay rate of the second electron state in the weak coupling. In particular, the electromagnetically induced transparency phenomenon window range is discussed. In the strong coupling region, the multi-order energy level resonance splitting due to the strong optical field is found. There are three (non-resonance terahertz field) or four (resonance terahertz field) peaks in the optical absorption spectra. This work provides a simple and convenient approach to deal with the optical absorption in the exciton system.
Nonlinear optical properties of intersubband electrons in a 3-level quantum well under intense terahertz field are investigated by using a density matrix approach. The results show that the terahertz fields with different frequencies cause the distinct modulations of the intersubband absorptions. The terahertz-induced sideband and Autler–Towns splitting in the absorption spectrum are obtained, respectively for the terahertz-photon energy below and close to the transition energy between the ground and first excited state.
We study theoretically the phenomenon of four-wave mixing in intersubband transitions of a symmetric double quantum well structure. In the theoretical model we consider two quantum well subbands that are coupled by a strong pump electromagnetic field and a weak probe electromagnetic field, taking into account the effects of electron-electron interactions. For the description of the system dynamics we use the density matrix equations obtained from the effective nonlinear Bloch equations. These equations are solved numerically for a realistic semiconductor quantum well structure GaAs/AlGaAs. We show that the four-wave mixing spectrum can be significantly dependent on the frequency and the intensity of the pump field and on electron sheet density.
We explore the transient characteristics of an interband resonant light modulation process by ultrashort intersubband resonant light pulses in semiconductor quantum wells (QW's). The modulation characteristics in a three-level semiconductor QW system, including the effects due to in-plane momentum, have been investigated by a numerical analysis of the coupled Bloch equations using a density-matrix approach. We have studied the effect of the carrier density and the nature of the intersubband coupling light on the transient absorption features of the interband light. The modulation process has been compared in doped and undoped QW's. The switching behavior of the strong interband light field in presence of a train of intersubband light pulses has also been discussed.