Degenerate pump-probe photoreflectance (PR) was measured on as-grown a
nd in situ annealed low-temperature-grown GaAs at photon energies well
-above bandgap (1.54-1.71 eV) to investigate the effects of annealing
and excitation energies on the initial carrier relaxation, The change
in reflectivity was found to depend strongly on the photon energy, esp
ecially for the annealed sample. This dependence is attributed to the
combined effect of absorption bleaching and enhanced absorption relate
d to excess arsenic. A three-component decomposition procedure was use
d to analyze all the measured PR traces, With this procedure, we found
that the initial carrier relaxation time was nearly a constant 160 fs
for the as-grown sample, indicating that trapping would dominate the
relaxation for excitation energies as high as 1.71 eV. For the anneale
d sample, the relaxation time increased slowly with the laser waveleng
th. After comparing it to the carrier trapping time obtained from phot
oconductive response, we conclude that the relaxation is dominated by
trapping for excitation energies up to 1.58 eV and by both trapping an
d cooling for excitation energies larger than 1.62 eV.