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Ultrafast coherent studies of excitons and excitonic complexes in doped and undoped GaAs quantum wells

University of British Columbia

This thesis reports a systematic study of near-band edge linear and nonlinear optical properties of doped and undoped semiconductor multiple quantum well samples, aimed at quantifying and separating the numerous contributions to the overall material response from photon excitation. Information obtained from both linear absorption and nonlinear, degenerate four-wave-mixing experiments is compared with elaborate numerical simulations. Accurate measures of 1S-2S binding energies and dephasing rates as a function of temperature from 5 to 40K is established. The biexciton binding energy and dephasing. rate over the temperature range 5 to 40 K is measured and, by comparison with theories reported in the literature, it is found that localization effects have a significant influence on the biexciton binding energy in 5 nm quantum wells. The first systematic attempt to quantitatively account for the continuum contribution to nonlinear response by fitting a series of spectra obtained at various input laser pulse detunings was conducted. Unique evidence for coherent beating between multi-exciton/free electron complexes in lightly doped material was also found.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-11-13

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/14906

Physics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

DSpace