Optical Dephasing of Excitons in III-V Semiconductors

Abstract

Rapid progress in the development of mode-locked laser systems during the past decade has boosted the time resolution attainable in nonlinear optical spectroscopy well below 100 fs. Ti: sapphire lasers which can directly generate pulses as short as 12 fs [1] mark the most recent milestone of this evolution. This new generation of fs solid state lasers surpasses the older colliding-pulse mode-locked (CPM) dye laser [2] by far with respect to output power and stability, and most importantly, by the broad tunability of the fs output between 680–1000 nm. Combining these lasers with frequency converters like harmonic generators [3] or optical parametric oscillators [4] extends the tunability range to the ultraviolet, visible, near and middle infrared regime.