Ag. Markelz et al., GIANT 3RD-ORDER NONLINEAR SUSCEPTIBILITIES FOR INPLANE FAR-INFRARED EXCITATION OF SINGLE INAS QUANTUM-WELLS, Solid-state electronics, 37(4-6), 1994, pp. 1243-1245
Third-order, free-carrier nonlinear susceptibilities, chi(3), have bee
n measured between 19 and 23 cm-1 for three InAs/AlSb quantum wells wi
th sheet densities between 2.5 x 10(12) cm-2 and 8 x 10(12) cm-2. We f
ind that these wells are strongly nonlinear at far-infrared frequencie
s: odd harmonics ninth order have been observed at high incident inten
sities, and the peak value of chi(3) reaches approximately 1 esu. This
is several orders of magnitude larger than previously reported values
for chi(3) in bulk n-GaAs (10(-4) esu)[1] and in polyacetylene (10(-7
) esu)[2]. The large magnitude of chi(3) is attributed to the high car
rier density in the InAs wells, and to the strong non-parabolicity of
the conduction band in InAs. However, the free-carrier chi(3) for bulk
InAs predicts a density-dependence different from that observed, and
the measured decrease in chi(3) with increasing intensity indicates no
n-perturbative response. We find that the anisotropy of chi(3) display
s the expected 4-fold symmetry.