On the origin of time-resolved pump–probe differential signal from excitons in quantum wells

We investigate the origin and nature of femtosecond time-resolved (TR) pump–probe differential (PPD) signal from the exciton resonance in semiconductor quantum wells (QWs) in the coherent regime. The excitonic PPD signal is expressed as a sum of interferences of the excitonic nonlinear polarization with the incident probe field and the linear polarization induced by the probe. A nonzero excitonic TR-PPD signal from QWs can occur for time t larger than the pulse width (tp) when the exciton dephasing time is longer than tp, and this signal can originate only from the second interference term for both the negative and positive pump–probe delays, the contribution from the first interference term being zero for t>tp. This is in contrast with the case of PPD signal in the spectral domain where the first interference term plays a major role. We discuss the effects of many body interactions on the TR-PPD signal. It is shown that excitation-induced dephasing can cause a significant increase in the rise time of the TR-PPD signal.