Coherent control of ground state excitons in the nonlinear regime within an ensemble of self-assembled InAs quantum dots

In this work femtosecond spectral hole burning spectroscopy is used to resonantly excite ground state excitons in an ensemble of self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots with a strong pump pulse. Two fundamental coherent nonlinear effects are observed with the aid of the intrinsic time- and frequency resolution of the setup: The low temperature Rabi oscillation of the two-level system associated with the excitonic ground state transition and the observation of two-photon absorption in the surrounding GaAs crystal matrix. The emergence of the latter effect also infers the existence of charged excitons in the nominally undoped QD sample, backed up by the observation of additional spectral holes next to the excitonic transitions. (copyright 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH and Co. KGaA, Weinheim) (orig.)