Carrier-wave Rabi flopping in GaAs: band structure effects and influence of the carrier-envelope phase

Summary form only given. In our recent experiments on the model semiconductor GaAs using 5 fs pulses, the Rabi period became as short as 3 fs, which is comparable to the period of light of 2.9 fs at the GaAs band edge. Hence, the medium´s dynamics significantly distort the optical polarization within one optical cycle, which can be measured by a characteristic shape of the harmonics of the emitted light. In this paper we summarize our efforts to obtain a detailed understanding of these experiments by simulations based on a finite difference time-domain algorithm, solving the coupled Maxwell-Bloch equations in one dimension without using either the rotating wave approximation or the slowly varying envelope approximation. We consider not only transitions close to the band edge but also transitions up to 5.8 eV photon energy in a realistic fashion, i.e. comprising the known E/sub 1/ and E/sub 2/ resonances in GaAs which are due to band structure effects.