Ultrafast nonlinear processes in quantum-dot optical amplifiers

Ultrafast gain dynamics in quantum-dot optical amplifiers has been studied by using the pump-probe and four-wave mixing (FWM) techniques. It was found that there are at least three nonlinear processes, which are attributed to carrier relaxation to the ground states, phonon scattering, and carrier capture from the wetting layers into the quantum dots (QDs). The relevant time constants were evaluated to be ～90 fs, ～260 fs, and ～2 ps, respectively, under a 50 mA bias condition. The compressed gain recovered to 3% of its initial value in 4 ps, and no recovery component slower than 2 ps could be seen in the temporal range tested. This is quite different from the feature in quantum wells, where a very slow component (> 50 ps) exists. This suggests a possibility of enhancing the operation speed of semiconductor optical amplifiers by using QDs as an active layer. The third-order optical susceptibility (χ⁽³⁾) has been evaluated by means of both nonlinear transmission and FWM experiments. The results show that the nonlinearity expressed by χ⁽³⁾/g ₀ is quite similar to that of bulk and quantum wells, which can be explained by the similar relaxation times.     

Picosecond studies of highly excited CdS

Results on picosecond luminescence and excite-and-probe transmission as well as transient grating measurements for highly excited CdS measured at a bath temperature of 5 K will be presented. The luminescence and optical gain both due to electron-hole plasma and excitonic molecule recombination are observed. The electron-hole plasma decays very fast by bimolecular recombination of electrons and holes in the plasma and diffusion of the carrier toward the low density regions, and transforms into excitons and excitonic molecules within 100–200 ps. The possibility of electron-hole liquid formation is definitely excluded. The exciton and excitonic molecule decay rather slowly and govern the optical properties for times longer than 200 ps.     

二硫化钼纳米点中的缺陷辅助载流子俘获超快动力学

二硫化钼纳米点正在成为有潜质的半导体材料用于光电设备的应用.然而,关于对其中激子动力学的研究却很少.本文利用飞秒瞬态吸收光谱学来研究二硫化钼纳米点的载流子动力学.结果显示,缺陷辅助的载流子再复合过程与观测到的动力学相符,通过俄歇散射对光激载流子进行俘获至少存在两种不同俘获速率的缺陷.四个过程参与了载流子驰豫,在受到光激发后,立即在~0.5 ps内载流子冷却,然后大部分载流子被缺陷快速俘获,随着泵浦能量的增加,该过程对应的时间从~4.9 ps增加到~9.2 ps,这可以用缺陷态的饱和来解释.接下来,拥有相对慢的载流子俘获速率的其它类型缺陷对小部分载流子进行俘获,该过程约65 ps.最后,剩余的少量载流子通过直接带间跃迁发生电子-空穴再复合,时间约为1 ns.研究结果可以深入了解二硫化钼纳米点中的载流子动力学基本原理,引导其更多的应用.     

Investigation of non-equilibrium electron-hole plasma in nanowires by THz spectroscopy

Efficient emission of THz radiation by AlGaAs nanowires via excitation of photocurrent by femtosecond optical pulses in nanowires was observed. Dynamics of photoinduced charge carrier was studied via influence of electron-hole plasma on THz radiation by optical pump THz probe method. It was found that characteristic time of screening of contact field is about 15 ps. Recombination of non-equilibrium occurs in two stages: fast recombination of free electron and holes (with relaxation time about 700 ps), and slow recombination (with relaxation time about 15 ns), which involves a capture of electrons and holes on the defects of crystalline structure of nanowires.     

Steady-state property and dynamics in graphene-nanoribbon-array lasers

In this work, we present a schematic configuration and device model for a graphene-nanoribbon (GNR)-array-based nanolaser, which consists of a three-variable rate equations that takes into account carrier capture and Pauli blocking in semiconductor GNR-array lasers to analyze the steady-state properties and dynamics in terms of the role of the capture rate and the gain coefficient in GNR array nanolasers. Furthermore, our GNR-array nanolaser device model can be determined as two distinct two-variable reductions of the rate equations in the limit of large capture rates, depending on their relative values. The first case leads to the rate equations for quantum well lasers, exhibiting relaxation oscillations dynamics. The second case corresponds to GNRs nearly saturated by the carriers and is characterized by the absence of relaxation oscillations. Our results here demonstrated that GNR-array as gain material embedded into a high finesse microcavity can serve as an ultralow lasing threshold nanolaser with promising applications ranging widely from optical fiber communication with increasing data processing speed to digital optical recording and biology spectroscopy     

High-speed all-optical switching in ion-implanted silicon-on-insulator microring resonators

We demonstrate high-speed all-optical switching via vertical excitation of an electron-hole plasma in an oxygen-ion implanted silicon-on-insulator microring resonator. Based on the plasma dispersion effect the spectral response of the device is rapidly modulated by photoinjection and subsequent recombination of charge carriers at artificially introduced fast recombination centers. At an implantation dose of 1 x 10(12) cm(-2) the carrier lifetime is reduced to 55 ps, which facilitates optical switching of signal light in the 1.55 mum wavelength range at modulation speeds larger than 5 Gbits/s.     

Suppression of slow gain recovery in ultralong quantum-dash semiconductor optical amplifier emitting at 1.55 μm

Gain dynamics in two quantum-dash semiconductor optical amplifiers of different lengths emitting in the 1.55 μm region are investigated experimentally and compared. It is shown that slow gain recovery due to total carrier relaxation is totally suppressed in the ultralong amplifier. Consequently, the 10%-90% gain recovery time is drastically reduced from about 40 ps (short sample) to 10 ps (long one).     

Interband recombination dynamics in resonantly excited single-walled carbon nanotubes

Wavelength-dependent pump-probe spectroscopy of micelle-suspended single-walled carbon nanotubes reveals two-component dynamics. The slow component (5-20 ps), which has not been observed previously, is resonantly enhanced whenever the pump photon energy coincides with an absorption peak and we attribute it to interband carrier recombination, whereas we interpret the always-present fast component (0.3-1.2 ps) as intraband carrier relaxation in nonresonantly excited nanotubes. The slow component decreases drastically with decreasing pH (or increasing H+ doping), especially in large-diameter tubes. This can be explained as a consequence of the disappearance of absorption peaks at high doping due to the entrance of the Fermi energy into the valence band, i.e., a 1D manifestation of the Burstein-Moss effect.     

Slow and fast light in quantum dot based semiconductor optical amplifiers

Recent progress in the field of quantum dot/dash based semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) for slow and fast light is discussed. Room temperature fast light has been obtained in InAs/InP QDash based SOAs by means of coherent population oscillation and four wave mixing (FWM) effects. Typical optical delays amount to 55 ps at 2 GHz. Growth optimization of the QDashes allowed us to achieve high modal gain, leading to very similar performances, e.g. gain and FWM efficiency, to those of a bulk SOA. A novel approach based on linear spectrograms is also introduced to measure the phase shift induced by wave mixing in an SOA.     

双光子激发ZnSe自由载流子超快动力学研究

采用Z扫描和抽运-探测实验技术, 在波长为532 nm、脉冲宽度为41 fs的条件下测得ZnSe晶体的双光子吸收系数, 并获得了不同激发光强下的自由载流子吸收截面、电子-空穴带间复合时间和电子-声子耦合时间. 研究发现, 随着激发光强的增大, 自由载流子吸收截面减小, 复合时间变短. 当激发光强增大导致载流子浓度大于10¹⁸ cm^-3时, 抽运-探测信号出现明显改变, 原因归结为强光场激发导致样品在短时间内带隙变窄和电子-空穴等离子体的形成.     

WS_2与WSe_2单层膜中的A激子及其自旋动力学特性研究

单层过渡金属硫化物由于其特有的激子效应以及强自旋-谷耦合性质,在光电子学及谷电子学等方面有着很广阔的应用前景.利用超快时间分辨光谱,本文系统地比较了两类钨基单层硫化物(WS_2和WSe_2)的A-激子动力学和谷自旋弛豫特性.实验结果表明, WS_2单层膜的A-激子弛豫表现为双指数过程,而对于WSe_2,其A-激子衰减表现为三指数过程,且激子的寿命远长于前者. WS_2谷自旋极化弛豫表现为单指数衰减,其寿命约0.35 ps,主要由电子-空穴交换作用所主导.而对于WSe_2,谷自旋弛豫表现出双指数弛豫特性:一个寿命为0.5 ps的快过程和一个寿命为28 ps的慢过程.快过程的弛豫来源于电子-空穴交换作用,而慢过程则由于自旋晶格散射形成暗激子的过程.通过调谐抽运光波长,进一步证实WSe_2较WS_2更容易形成暗激子.     

Amplification of kW peak power femtosecond pulses in single quantum well InGaAs tapered amplifiers

The amplification of ps and fs pulses with peak powers of up to 4.5 kW has been investigated in a single quantum well InGaAs tapered amplifier. The pulses with durations of 100 fs or 2 ps were generated by a modelocked titanium-sapphire laser. The amplified pulses indicate strong gain saturation and carrier generation due to photon absorption in the laser active region which causes a temporal broadening of the amplified pulses as well as modifications of the optical spectrum. The gain recovery time was measured by a pump-probe experiment. The experimental results are analyzed with respect to the sub-ps gain dynamics which is described by a relaxation time approximation.     

Alloy composition effects on the gain and the differential gain for CdZnTe based II–VI semiconductor lasers

We study the variation of the gain and the differential gain for a quantum well laser based on the CdZnTe alloys. We calculate theoretically the optical gain of CdZnTe based quantum well laser, as function of the alloys composition for various values of carrier’s densities. Our study is based on the parabolic model with the intraband relaxation taken into account. Finally, we investigate how the composition alloys affects the differential gain of quantum well lasers.     

Coherent optical control of the spin of a single hole in an InAs/GaAs quantum dot

We demonstrate coherent optical control of a single hole spin confined to an InAs/GaAs quantum dot. A superposition of hole-spin states is created by fast (10-100?ps) dissociation of a spin-polarized electron-hole pair. Full control of the hole spin is achieved by combining coherent rotations about two axes: Larmor precession of the hole spin about an external Voigt geometry magnetic field, and rotation about the optical axis due to the geometric phase shift induced by a picosecond laser pulse resonant with the hole-trion transition.     

Size-dependent optical properties and carriers dynamics in CdSe/ZnS quantum dots

Size-dependence of optical properties and energy relaxation in CdSe/ZnS quantum dots （QDs） were investigated by two-colour femtosecond （fs） pump-probe （400/800 nm） and picosecond time-resolved photoluminescence （ps TRPL） experiments. Pump-probe measurement results show that there are two components for the excited carriers relaxation, the fast one with a time constant of several ps arises from the Auger-type recombination, which shows almost particle sizeindependence. The slow relaxation component with a time constant of several decades of ns can be clearly determined with ps TRPL spectroscopy in which the slow relaxation process shows strong particle size-dependence. The decay time constants increase from 21 to 34 ns with the decrease of particle size from 3.2 to 2.1 nm. The room-temperature decay lifetime is due to the thermal mixing of bright and dark excitons, and the size-dependence of slow relaxation process can be explained very well in terms of simple three-level model.     

高分子光激发的超快过程与弛豫

利用多声子跃迁理论,解释了聚合物中光激发动力学中的快成分(100fs)和慢成分(ns)的起源。并分别计算了它们的演化时间。结果表明,快成分对应于从自由电子-空穴对形成中性双极化子,慢成分对应于中性双极化子的无辐射衰变。还用解动力学方程的方法模拟了双极化子的形成。 关键词：     

基于石墨烯-钙钛矿量子点场效应晶体管的光电探测器

以等离子增强化学气相沉积法制备的石墨烯作为导电沟道材料,将其与无机CsPbI_3钙钛矿量子点结合,设计并制备了石墨烯-钙钛矿量子点场效应晶体管光电探测器.研究和分析了石墨烯作为场效应晶体管的电学特性及其与钙钛矿量子点结合作为光电探测器的光电特性.结果表明,石墨烯在场效应晶体管中表现出良好的电学性质,其与钙钛矿量子点的结合对波长为400 nm的光辐射具有明显的光响应,在光强为12μW时器件光生电流最大为64μA,响应率达6.4 A·W~(-1),对应的光电导增益和探测率分别为3.7×10~4,6×10~7Jones(1 Jones=1 cm·Hz~(1/2)·W~(-1)).     

Polaron dynamics in thin polythiophene films studied with time-resolved photoemission

Femtosecond time-resolved two-photon photoemission spectroscopy is employed to study the dynamics of an excited state in a thin regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) (RR-P3HT) film deposited on a conducting polymer poly(3,4-ethylene-dioxythiophene): poly-(styrenesulfonate) (PEDT:PSS) electrode following optical excitation at 2.1 eV. We found that the biexponential decay of this excited state has a fast component (2.6 ps) assigned to bound polaron pairs which recombine quickly or separate to be added to the slow component (7.6 ps). The latter is attributed to polarons generated via charge transfer between adjacent polymer chains.     

亚单层InGaAs量子点-量子阱异质结构的时间分辨光致发光谱

测定了亚单层InGaAs/GaAs量子点-量子阱异质结构在5K下的时间分辨光致发光谱.亚单层量 子点的辐射寿命在500 ps 至 800 ps之间，随量子点尺寸的增大而增大，与量子点中激子的 较小的横向限制能以及激子从小量子点向大量子点的隧穿转移有关.光致发光上升时间强烈 依赖于激发强度密度.在弱激发强度密度下，上升时间为 35 ps，纵光学声子发射为主要的 载流子俘获机理.在强激发强度密度下，上升时间随激发强度密度的增加而减小，俄歇过程 为主要的载流子俘获机理.该结果对理解亚单层量子点器件的工作特性非常有用. 关键词： 亚单层 量子点-量子阱 时间分辨光致发光谱