Abstract

The excitonic nonlinearities in II-VI wide gap semiconductors have recently become an interesting research topic. Andersen et al.¹ studied the saturating absorption of excitonic resonance in ZnSe single crystal films and (Zn, Mn)Se superlattices, which they attributed to Coulombic screening for the case of ZnSe film or a wide-well (Zn,Mn)Se quantum well structure at 77 K, and the Coulombic screening and phase space filling for a narrow-well structure. Gribkovskii et al.² have observed the increase of excitonic absorption optical bistability in ZnSe film and attributed it to excitonic broadening and gap renormalization for the nonlinear mechanism. We report the first observation of optical bistability in ZnSe/ZnS MQWs grown by MOCVD on CaF₂ substrates.

© 1990 Optical Society of America