Professor Robert Taylor

Abstract:

We present a comparative study of time-integrated four-wave-mixing and femtosecond emission under resonant, excitation on excitons in weakly disordered GaAs quantum wells. At highest exciton densities when dephasing dominates the spectral width (homogeneous broadening), we find that the rise time of the incoherent luminescence signal is given by T2/2. At lowest densities, optical coherence times approach the exciton radiative lifetime (15 to 20 ps). This confirms our previous result that coherent resonant Rayleigh scattering is responsible for the short rise time of the excitonic emission. We also show clear evidence for dephasing due to exciton-phonon interaction, as the rise time of the emission decreases dramatically when the sample temperature is increased.

Abstract:

We study the ultrafast properties of secondary radiation of semiconductor quantum wells under resonant excitation. We show that the exciton density dependence allows one to identify the origin of secondary radiation. At high exciton densities, the emission is due to incoherent luminescence with a rise time determined by exciton-exciton scattering. For low densities, when the distance between excitons is much larger than their diameter, the temporal shape is independent of density and rises quadratically, in excellent agreement with recent theories for resonant Rayleigh scattering. © 1997 The American Physical Society.

Abstract:

Luminescence has been quite widely used for the study of semiconductor nanostructures, and more especially time resolved luminescence, due to the ease to get a luminescence signal. The interpretation of the results however is sometimes quite complex, and one generally finds that some care has to be taken for the results to be meaningful. In particular, the homogeneity of the excited density over the detected luminescence signal is a quite important parameter, also it is often desirable to work at the lowest possible densities.