Observation of Biexcitons in Time-Resolved Degenerate-Four-Wave-Mixing on GaAs Quantum Wells

Although the importance of exciton/exciton interactions for the nonlinear optical response of GaAs quantum wells (QW) is well established by many experimental observations, the role of biexciton states in these processes is still an open question, even at low excitation densities. Evidence for the formation of biexcitons has been independently derived from pump-probe studies [1], from the density dependence of the photoluminescence (PL) line shape [2] and from signal modulations observed in degenerate-four-wave-mixing (DFWM) with incoherent light pulses [3]. Here, we report on time-resolved DFWM with parallel (PP) and cross-polarized (CP) pulses. Depending on the polarization geometry, the signals reveal strong quantum beats which correspond to the splitting between either the heavy hole (hh) and light hole (lh) exciton or the hh exciton and the biexciton.