Ultrafast shift and rectification photocurrents in GaAs quantum wells: Excitation intensity dependence and the importance of band mixing

A microscopic approach that is based on the multisubband semiconductor Bloch equations formulated in the basis of a 14-band k⋅p model is employed to compute the temporal dynamics of photocurrents in GaAs quantum wells following excitation with femtosecond laser pulses. This approach provides a transparent description of the interband, intersubband, and intraband excitations, fully includes all resonant as well as off-resonant excitations, and treats the light-matter interaction nonperturbatively. For linearly polarized excitations, the photocurrents contain contributions from shift and rectification currents. We numerically compute and analyze these currents generated by excitation with femtosecond laser pulses for [110]- and [111]-oriented GaAs quantum wells. It is shown that the often employed perturbative χ(2) approach breaks down for peak fields larger than about 10 kV/cm, and that nonperturbative effects lead to a reduction of the peak values of the shift and rectification currents and to temporal oscillations that originate from Rabi flopping. In particular, we find a complex oscillatory photon energy dependence of the magnitudes of the shift and rectification currents. Our simulations demonstrate that this dependence is the result of mixing between the heavy- and light-hole valence bands. This is a surprising finding since the band mixing has an even larger influence on the strength of the photocurrents than the absorption coefficient. For [110]-oriented GaAs quantum wells, the calculated photon energy dependence is compared to experimental results, and good agreement is obtained. This validates our theoretical approach.