Synthetic nonlinear semiconductors

Abstract

Second-order optical nonlinearities associated with intra-subband transitions in Al <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">x</inf> Ga <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1-x</inf> AS heterostructure exhibiting the quantum size effect are considered and shown to be large under conditions of degenerate doping and nonsymmetric compositional grading. Nonlinearities of between 10-100 times larger than in bulk GaAs seem feasible.