Anomalous photon echoes and Rabi oscillations of quantum dot excitons

Abstract

Optical coherence time and nonlinear optical response of excitons localized to quantum dots in a GaAs/AlGaAs single quantum well are investigated by the three-pulse photon echo technique. At low temperature, the optical coherence time is estimated to be 1.8 ns from the decay curve of the photon echo signal. The decay profile for short time delay shows the strong dependence on the input pulse area of the third pulse. Rabi oscillations are also observed. The oscillations exhibit nonlinear behavior, which is affected by the pre-excited polarization. Such behavior can be qualitatively explained by the local field effect due to the exciton-exciton interaction between the excitons.