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Session M14 - DCMP: HETEROSTRUCTURES: OPTICAL PROPERTIES OF QUANTUM WELLS: THEORY
Mixed session, Thursday morning, March 23, 8:00
Room J4, San Jose Convention Center
A new type of intrinsic optical bistability in a double quantum well is described theoretically. L. N. Pandey, L. S. Muratov, and T. F. George, Phys.\ Rev.\ B 48, 10966 (1993) The effect is based on the resonant tunneling of electrons against the electric-field force (the counterfield electron transfer) and is driven and controlled by far-ir radiation exciting an intersubband transition. The theory relies on the density-matrix technique and takes into account optical intersubband excitation, interwell tunneling, the relaxation of populations and polarizations, and the mean-field effects of the transferred electron charge (shifts of the levels and changes of matrix elements). Hysteresis-type curves are obtained for both the charge-transfer probability and the optical absorption as functions of the light intensity. The theory shows the effect to be readily observable under realistic conditions, with the exciting-light intensity as low as 50 W/cm ^2 .