Enhancement of the third-order nonlinear optical susceptibility in Si quantum wires
- 15 October 1993
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review B
- Vol. 48 (16), 11879-11882
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.48.11879
Abstract
Recent observation of efficient light emission from porous silicon has attracted much attention and renewed interests in the study of nonlinear optical properties of nanometer-sized quantum systems. In this paper, we study the third-order nonlinear optical susceptibility of semiconductor quantum wires. The quantum wires are taken to be circular columns with a cross section size of ∼1 nm. The excitonic effects are taken to be the major electronic excitations. We find that the quantum confinement of the excitons greatly enhances the third-order optical nonlinear susceptibility in a quantum wire. The source of the enhancement is primarily the confinement-induced localization of excitons. The large enhancement of the third-order optical nonlinearity estimated here is consistent with the recent observation of the efficient infrared-up-conversion luminescence in porous silicon.Keywords
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