Ultrafast phase distortion of the transmitted pulse in GaAs quantum wells

The phase characteristics of transmitted optical pulses were investigated in the energy- and the temporal domain using the spectrally resolved cross-correlation technique. The temporal evolution of fs pulses passing through GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells indicates a long tail due to the coherent emission from the exciton. The phase discontinuity was observed in the time-domain data. The phase of the coherent emission signal is found to differ by 180° from that of the incident light field. Furthermore, we report the pulse propagation effect when the pre-excited coherent exciton exists in the sample. The resultant data shows that the ultrashort optical pulses are strongly affected by the phase difference between the coherent emission and the coherent exciton polarization.