Transition between different coherent light–matter interaction regimes analyzed by phase-resolved pulse propagation

Abstract

We present phase-resolved pulse propagation measurements that allow us to fully describe the transition between several light-matter interaction regimes. The complete range from linear excitation to the breakdown of the photonic bandgap on to self-induced transmission and self-phase modulation is studied on a high-quality multiple-quantum-well Bragg structure. An improved fast-scanning cross-correlation frequency-resolved optical gating setup is applied to retrieve the pulse phase with an excellent signal-to-noise ratio. Calculations using the semiconductor Maxwell-Bloch equations show qualitative agreement with the experimental findings.

Linear and nonlinear optics in photonic crystals

“…The inclusion of gain, or a local population inversion, in the system opens up a range of additional, novel nonlinear effects [11][12][13].…”

Nonlinear pulse propagation in an intersubband resonance multiple quantum wells

“…Currently, there has been tremendous interest [1,2,3,4] in the study of the nonlinear propagation of ultrashort pulses through semiconductor multiple quantum wells(QWs) for a broad range of both science and technical applications. Different from the atomic systems which could be modeled as nonlinear two-level systems [5], the many-body effects arising from the macroscopic carrier density in semiconductors [6] may prevent the establishment of complete selfinduced transparency(SIT) [7,8,9].…”

Generation of slow intense optical solitons in a resonance photonic crystal

“…A recent resurgence of interest in photonics crystals with resonant nonlinearities is due to the advances in the manufacturing of periodic Bragg semiconductor nanostructures such as InGaAs/GaAs multiple quantum wells and rare-earth doped AlGaAs/GaAs structures [12,13,14], and understanding their linear and nonlinear optical propa E-mail: igor.melnikov@utoronto.ca erties [15,16,17]. This suggests that the building blocks of future all-optical processing systems, such as those based on the propagation of GSs might be experimentally feasible at moderate optical power levels of about 10 MW/cm 2 .…”