Picosecond electron dynamics in doped superlattices studied by two-color infrared pump-probe spectroscopy

Recently we reported on single-color pump-probe measurements in doped superlattices (SLs) where we could observe a fast interminiband relaxation (1-2 ps) and much slower components due to subsequent cooling of the electron gas [1]. Pumping and probing at the same wavelength always results in a mixture of these two processes. However, strongly coupled SLs exhibit a broad absorption range so that excitation at a specific k-value in the mini-Brillouin zone influences the electron distribution over the entire zone (see inset of Fig. 1). In order to separate the inter- from the intra-miniband contributions we have performed two-color pump-probe experiments allowing to monitor exclusively the dynamics within the lower miniband. Infrared pulses from the free-electron laser FELBE were used as pump, and broadband THz pulses, generated by phase-matched optical rectification of 10 fs near-infrared pulses, as the probe. The relaxation behavior was studied for three GaAs/Al0.3Ga0.7As SLs having nearly he same doping concentration but different widths of the lower miniband, i.e., 10, 22, and 45 meV. To study the cooling behavior at T=5 K, the FEL pulses were tuned to the high-energy transition at the zone center, while the probe pulse was set to the zone-edge transition. After excitation to the second miniband, the electrons thermalize and relax back to the ground miniband, efficiently heating the electron gas. According to the linear absorption spectrum, this heating leads to induced absorption at the probe energy. For the SL structures with miniband widths below the optical phonon energy we measured cooling times of 40-50 ps for pump intensities higher than 20 MW/cm². For smaller pump intensities the time constants rose up to 200 ps (see Fig. 1). The sample with the miniband width of 45 meV showed a much shorter cooling time of 3.5 ps. This can be explained by the enhanced relaxation via the emission of LO phonons. We will also report room-temperature measurements, where the initially strong absorption is reduced by relaxation towards the zone center which has been depleted by the pump pulse.
References:
[1] D. Stehr et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 88, 151108 (2006).