https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2015-50575-0
Regular Article
Control of the carrier-envelope-phase effect in the transmitted spectra in quantum wells via terahertz waves
1
School of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Jiangsu Normal
University, Xuzhou
221116, P.R.
China
2
State Key Laboratory of High Field Laser Physics, Shanghai
Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Shanghai
201800, P.R.
China
a e-mail: chaojinzhang@163.com
b e-mail: chpliu@siom.ac.cn
Received:
2
August
2014
Received in final form:
10
April
2015
Published online:
21
May
2015
The propagation of a short pulse through an ensemble of semiconductor double quantum wells is theoretically investigated, and that whether the transmitted spectrum is discrete or continuous strongly depends on the carrier envelope phase (CEP) of the incident light pulse. Its origin lies in the quantum interference effect among the different-number-photon absorption paths. As expected, such a CEP-dependence weakens with the increment of pulse duration, till disappears for an enough long pulse. However, if a weak terahertz wave is superposed to this long pulse, the transmitted spectrum recovers as CEP-dependent once more, which inversely can be used to characterize the phase property of the terahertz wave and provides supports for its widespread use.
Key words: Optical Phenomena and Photonics
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2015