Various appearances of Rabi oscillations for 2π-pulse excitation in a semiconductor

Abstract

The number of complete Rabi oscillations of the electron-hole density induced by square optical pulses with area 2π is studied using the coherent part of the semiconductor Bloch equations. It is shown that the frequency of the density oscillations depends strongly on the exciton binding frequency, detuning, and the Rabi frequency of the light pulse. The well known doubling of the density oscillation frequency is only observed if the Rabi frequency and exciton binding frequency are approximately of the same order of magnitude. However for strong and weak excitation the semiconductor exhibits properties of atomic systems.