Ultrafast Auger spectroscopy of quantum well excitons in a strong magnetic field

Abstract

We study theoretically the ultrafast nonlinear optical response of quantum well excitons in a perpendicular magnetic field. We address the role of many-body correlations originating from the electron scattering between Landau levels (LL). In the linear optical response, the processes involving inter-LL transitions are suppressed provided that the magnetic field is sufficiently strong. However, in the nonlinear response, the Auger processes involving inter-LL scattering of two photoexcited electrons remain unsuppressed. We show that Auger scattering plays the dominant role in the coherent exciton dynamics in strong magnetic field. We perform numerical calculations for the third-order four-wave-mixing (FWM) polarization which incorporate the Auger processes nonperturbatively. We find that inter-LL scattering leads to a strong enhancement and to oscillations of the FWM signal at negative time delays. These oscillations represent quantum beats between optically-inactive two-exciton states related to each other via Auger processes.