INTERACTION-INDUCED POLARIZATION ROTATION IN ANISOTROPIC SEMICONDUCTOR QUANTUM-WELLS

It is shown that the ultrafast coherent nonlinear optical effect of in teraction-induced polarization rotation can be used to identify and st udy interaction processes in many-body systems. In the theoretical exa mple presented here, signatures of coherent exciton-exciton interactio ns are identified in polarization trajectories in Poincare's Cartesian complex plane of polarization, which is used to visualize the differe ntial polarization rotation (or, alternatively, the polarization of th o reflected light) of femtosecond light pulses in uniaxially strained quantum wells. Interaction processes are found to affect significantly the polarization trajectories, including their symmetry properties.