Abstract

Recently the shortest pulses directly out of a Ti:sapphire laser as short as 6.5fs has been generated by use of single quantum well (SQW) GaAs absorber [1]. Since this laser produces pulses with durations shorter than or comparable to the polarization dephasing time and sufficient power for Rabi flopping of the excited carrier density, the noninstantaneous response of the absorber polarization has to be taken into account. We develope the theory of coherent absorber mode locking taking into account also inhomogeneous broadening of the semiconductor transition by freely movable carriers and Coulomb renormalization of the transition frequency in the scope of semiconductor Bloch equations. Photo-echo measurements in highly excited GaAs yield a decreasing of the effective dephasing with increasing of the laser excited carrier density as T₂ ∝ N^-1/3. In the SQW absorber the center wavelength of 750nm is well above the bandedge of the GaAs SQW at 870nm and the broad pulse spectrum excites mainly 3D carriers above the confinement depth. We have shown that Rabi-flopping is self-consistently produced due to sub10fs pulse formation at TW/cm² intensities corresponding to an excited carrier density up to 10²⁰cm^-3.

© 1998 IEEE