Ultrafast adiabatic population transfer in p-doped semiconductor quantum wells

Summary form only given.In atomic and molecular physics, coherent optical techniques allowing for almost complete ultrafast transfer of a population between different molecular eigenstates has been developed and refined for many years. One particularly successful scheme is called stimulated Raman scattering by delayed pulses (STIRAP). Within this scheme, it is possible to transfer a population between two nonoptically coupled states by using a third state (which is optically coupled to both the initial and the final state) without actually occupying it, in the end, at all. As for semiconductors, the question arises whether similar techniques can be used to transfer, for example, holes from the heavy-hole (HH) band to the light-hole (LH) band without creating electrons in the process. We have studied this problem theoretically and have identified parameter regimes where we believe the delayed-pulse scheme can be efficiently applied to the HH-LH population transfer.