Gallium arsenide photoluminescence under picosecond-laser-driven shock compression

Abstract

A pump-and-probe technique was used to investigate shock effects on the photoluminescence spectra (∼833 nm) at T=80 K due to the direct transition E0 from the Γ6 conduction band to the Γ8 fourfold degenerate top valence band in GaAs. Under the shock loading condition, the photoluminescence peak was observed to blue shift and split into two components, corresponding to the transitions from the Γ6 conduction band to the valence heavy- and light-hole subbands, because of symmetry breaking by the uniaxial shock compression along the [001] direction. From the blue shift of the photoluminescence peaks, we deduced our picosecond-laser-driven shock pressure of ∼10 kbar.