Eur. Phys. J. B 27, 89-102 (2002)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e20020133

Electromagnetically induced transparency in asymmetric double quantum wells

¹ Scuola Normale Superiore, Piazza dei Cavalieri 7, 56126 Pisa, Italy
² Istituto Nazionale di Fisica della Materia, Italy
³ University of Technology and Agriculture, Kaliskiego 7, 85796 Bydgoszcz, Poland
⁴ Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, Tehran, PO Box 19395-5531, Iran

Corresponding author: ^a l.silvestri@sns.it

Received: 21 June 2001
Revised: 21 January 2002
Published online: 15 May 2002

Abstract

We show how to compute nonlinear optical absorption spectra of an Asymmetric Double Quantum Well (ADQW) in the region of intersubband electronic transitions. The method uses the microscopic calculation of the dephasing due to electron-electron and electron-phonon scattering rates and the macroscopic real density matrix approach to compute the electromagnetic fields and susceptibilities. The polarization dephasing and the corrections to the Rabi frequencies due to the electron-electron interaction are also taken into account. For a proper choice of the QW widths and of the driving fields we obtain electromagnetically induced transparency. This transparency has a very narrow linewidth when a single driving field is applied resonant to the transition between the second and the third subband. In the case of two resonant driving fields or of a driving field resonant between the first and third subband we obtain a large transparency enhancement over the entire absorption spectrum. Results are given for GaAs/GaAlAs QWs and experiments are proposed.