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IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics

Bandwidth-limited diffraction of femtosecond pulses from photorefractive quantum wells

Robert M. Brubaker, Yi Ding, David D. Nolte, M. R. Melloch, Andrew M. Weiner

Published Jan 1, 1997• 16 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The diffraction of 100-fs pulses from the static gratings of photorefractive quantum wells (QWs) produces diffracted pulses that are nearly transform-limited, despite the strong dispersion near the quantum-confined excitonic transitions. This quality makes the QW's candidates for use in femtosecond pulse shaping, although the currently limited bandwidth of the quantum-confined excitonic transitions broadens the diffracted pulses. Femtosecond electric-field cross correlation and spectral interferometry techniques completely characterize the low-intensity pulses diffracted from stand-alone photorefractive QWs, and from QWs placed inside a Fourier-domain femtosecond pulse shaper.

DOI
10.1109/3.644095

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The diffraction of 100-fs pulses from the static gratings of photorefractive quantum wells (QWs) produces diffracted pulses that are nearly transform-limited, despite the strong dispersion near the quantum-confined excitonic transitions. This quality makes the QW's candidates for use in femtosecond pulse shaping, although the currently limited bandwidth of the quantum-confined excitonic transitions broadens the diffracted pulses. Femtosecond electric-field cross correlation and spectral interferometry techniques completely characterize the low-intensity pulses diffracted from stand-alone photorefractive QWs, and from QWs placed inside a Fourier-domain femtosecond pulse shaper.
Summary form only given. When femtosecond pulses diffract from photorefractive quantum wells their pulse shape is distorted by the amplitude and phase of the photorefractive gratings. In this paper we report the first, to our knowledge, electric field cross-correlation measurements of the change in pulse shape induced by nondegenerate four-wave mixing in photorefractive quantum wells. This work is a preliminary step towards the long-range goal of performing dynamic femtosecond pulse shaping using photorefractive quantum wells for ultrafast-pulse processing applications.
Photorefractive AlGaAs–GaAs multiple-quantum-well structures perform as ultrafast field autocorrelators during steady-state four-wave mixing by use of femtosecond pulses. The photorefractive thin films operate in the Raman–Nath diffraction regime with thin transmission gratings. The thin gratings permit degenerate and nondegenerate four-wave mixing without the need to satisfy phase-matching conditions. Nondegenerate mixing has several advantages over degenerate four-wave mixing. The autocorrelation is broadband and is viable for photon energies larger than the band gap of the photorefractive sample, and the diffraction efficiency is unaffected by the bandwidth of the femtosecond pulses. In addition, the readout laser can be a low-power low-cost cw diode laser.
Summary form only given.We report on a general approach to coherent control in semiconductors, based on optical waveforms with synthesized intensity and phase versus time. This technique is limited only by the bandwidth of the initial laser pulses and the spectral resolution of the pulse-shaping apparatus. It is therefore especially suitable to investigate effects such as off-resonant Rabi oscillations and polaritons in multiple quantum wells. Experiments were performed in four-wave mixing (FWM) and differential reflection geometry based on a mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser emitting 100-fs pulses.
We observe an efficient phase coherent photorefractive effect in ZnSe single quantum wells for ultrashort light pulses resonant to the excitonic transition. The effect is attributed to the formation of an electron grating in the quantum well induced by the interference of coherent excitons that preserve phase and polarization of the incident light fields. All characteristic features of the diffracted signal are explained and reproduced by numerical calculations that are based on the optical Bloch equations for a three-level system.
We demonstrate the coherent destruction of photogenerated excitons in semiconductor quantum wells within a few hundred femtoseconds of their excitation. Coherent control of carrier dynamics is achieved with phase-locked pairs of 100 fs infrared pulses. The technique induces an optical response which is faster than the inverse of the exciton linewidth superseding Fourier limits for a single pulse. Energy selectivity enables the coherent transfer of angular momentum between hole states. Such phase-tailored pulse trains can be utilized to investigate the generation process and intermediate virtual states in quantum structures.