Linear and dynamical photoinduced dichroisms of InAs/GaAs self-assembled quantum dots: Population relaxation and decoherence measurements

• Published in: Physical review. B, Condensed matter and materials physics Vol. 73; no. 8
• Main Authors: Bernardot, Frédéric, Aubry, E, Tribollet, J, Testelin, Christophe, Chamarro, Maria, Lombez, L, Braun, Pf, Marie, Xavier, Amand, Thierry, Gerard, Jm
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society 01-02-2006
• Subjects: Condensed Matter; Physics
• ISSN: 1098-0121; 1550-235X
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.73.085301

We present and model our pump-probe experiments measuring the photoinduced dynamics of an ensemble of self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots. A pulsed pump beam, linearly polarized along an in-plane symmetry axis of the quantum dots, photoinduces a linear dichroism. We show that the dynamics of this linear dichroism is consistent with a long spin relaxation time and allows us to measure different radiative lifetimes for both nondegenerate, low-lying, electron-hole pair states. In another experimental configuration, when the pump beam creates a coherent superposition of these electron-hole pair states, it photoinduces a dynamical dichroism, which gives information about quantum decoherence and provides the electron-hole anisotropic exchange interaction energy splitting, 41 +/- 8 mu eV at 1.343 eV. A model is developed, which accounts for the dynamical dichroism and predicts the experimental observations with good accuracy.