Photon Echoes from Semiconductor Band-to-Band Continuum Transitions in the Regime of Coulomb Quantum Kinetics

Abstract

We show that the coherent response of semiconductor band-to-band continuum transitions at roomtemperature, excited by 11 fs pulses at elevated carrier densities, deviates substantially from thatexpected for an ideal photon echo. A microscopic non-Markovian quantum kinetic theory of bothelectron-electron and electron-LO-phonon scattering reproduces these unusual experimental observationsqualitatively and, furthermore, the famous scaling of the decay time t with carrier density