Dressed excitons within an incoherent electron gas: Observation of a Mollow triplet and an Autler-Townes doublet

Abstract

We demonstrate that the interaction between excitons and a sea of incoherent electrons does not preclude excitons dressing by light. We investigate if exciton-electron scattering plays some inhibiting role in the coherent light-exciton coupling by measuring the dynamical absorption spectrum of a modulation-doped CdTe quantum well that shows clear evidence for significant electron scattering of the excitonic states. We show the occurrence of dressed and correlated excitons by detecting quantum coherent interferences through excitonic Autler-Townes doublet and ac Stark splitting that evolves into a Mollow triplet with gain. We also evidence the partial inhibition of the electron-exciton scattering by exciton-light coupling. The absorption spectrum of semiconductor quantum wells is dominated by a strong exciton resonance. Excitons are bound, conduction electron valence-hole pairs and are quite often compared to a two level system as a hydrogen atom. The role of many body interactions and exciton correlations in the exciton dynamical absorption spectrum has attracted much interest for several decades. The response of the exciton absorption to an incoherent and thermalized electronhole population obtained through nonresonant pumping in the continuum corresponds mainly to a broadening of the exciton resonance that is dominated by collision broadening excitation-induced dephasing rather than by a bleaching due to the saturation of the oscillator strength caused by phase space filling. 1 The effect increases with electron-hole concentration. In the regime of coherent pumping at the ex