Electro- and magneto-optic properties of photorefractive semiconductors.

摘要

The photorefractive effect is a low intensity, nonlocal optical nonlinearity which has been studied extensively because of its potential uses. Photorefractive quantum wells exhibit record sensitivities and speeds, and are prime candidates for optical processing applications, both in the spatial (for images) and in the time domain (for the shaping of femtosecond pulses). For this latter application, multiple quantum well devices have to overcome a large bandwidth mismatch with femtosecond pulses, which arises from the resonant nature of photorefractivity at the bandgap. By engineering the excitonic transition spectrum of multiple quantum wells, the bandwidth of photorefractive multiple quantum well devices is increased to match that of ultrafast pulses. In superlattices, breaking of the spatial periodicity leads to the emergence of a wide distribution of critical points and transition energies; we have explored the effect of quasiperiodicity in Fibonacci superlattices, where excitonic interactions concentrate the oscillator strength at low energies and limit the useful diffractive bandwidth. Multiple quantum well structures in which the quantum wells are isolated and the quantum confinement can be tuned along the thickness of the device offer a wide parameter space for bandwidth design. In quantum well devices, almost dispersion-free diffraction can be achieved due to the Kramers-Kronig relationship between the real and imaginary parts of the electro-refraction, which makes the phase of the diffracted pulse linear in frequency. The second part of the thesis concentrates on the photorefractive effect in diluted magnetic semiconductors. In ZnMnSe epilayers, we demonstrate resonant photorefractive diffraction in the blue spectral region. Wide-gap II-VI semiconductors have characteristic properties (such as high absorption coefficients at the gap and low sensitivity to electric fields) which make the fabrication of resonant photorefractive devices in the transverse geometry particularly challenging. Finally, we use the bulk diluted magnetic semiconductor CdMnTe to show that a magnetic field can quench time-reversed or phase conjugate light, in a striking illustration of removal of time reversal symmetry by magnetic fields. We discuss the limits of this analogy and outline the effect of magnetic fields on the geometric (Berry's) phase of the phase conjugate beam.