Scaling of Stark-shifted per-carrier nonlinearities in multiple-quantum-well device structures

We demonstrate simple rules for the scaling of per-carrier Stark-shifted nonlinearities with well number, electric field, amplitude and width of the excitonic transition by measuring the per carrier nonlinear response of a number of multiple-quantum-well structures as a function of temperature, bias and materials system. These measurements illustrate that the per-carrier nonlinearity can be improved by optimizing the in-well bias field and by increasing the number of wells per intrinsic region; however, they also demonstrate that when the measured per-carrier nonlinearities are corrected for material quality and temperature (i.e., excitonic amplitude and linewidth) that the per-carrier response does not depend appreciably on material system or on whether the fields are externally-applied, built-in, or intrinsic