Polarization dependence of two-photon transitions in quantum wells

Summary We give explicitly the polarization dependence of two-photon subband-subband transitions in semiconductor quantum wells. We consider transitions from heavy-hole subbands as well as from light-hole subbands. We study the polarization dependence in the case of absorption of one photon having an energy of the order of the band gap and one having an energy of the order of the subband separation. We show that the absorption structure depends on the polarization of the low-energy photon. We also give, in the case of equal photons with in-plane linear polarizations, the dependence of the transition rate on the angle between the polarizations.