Semiconductor Optical Physics

Computational Photonics Laboratory

Dr. Jerome Moloney. Located at the Arizona Center for Mathematical Sciences in the University of Arizona’s Economics Building, this research computing laboratory contains an in-house 22-CPU Silicon Graphics ONYX2 supercomputing platform with two dedicated high speed graphics pipes for large scale interactive simulation and visualization. The laboratory also houses a distributed 1 Gbit optical fiber-linked, 1.3 GHz PC Linux cluster of 8 PCs. The laboratory provides a powerful interactive environment for the study and optimization of complex geometry high power diode lasers, simulation of high power femtosecond pulse propagation in nonlinear optical materials and optical propagation in nanoscale integrated optical circuits including photonic Bragg structures.

Radiative Properties of Quantum Does and Wells

Dr. Galina Khitrova and Dr. Hyatt Gibbs. Photoluminescence, both time integrated and streak-camera time resolved, following nonresonant excitation and resonant transmission, reflection, and propagation experiments are performed on quantum dot ensembles and on multiple quantum wells spaced periodically or quasiperiodically. See the research topic Quantum Nano-Optics of Semiconductors for more information.  08-2009

Semiconductor Optics and Photonics Computing Program

Dr. Rolf Binder. Semiconductors are a central part of the ongoing and future revolution in opto-electronics. A detailed understanding of the microscopic processes in semiconductors, which determine both their linear and nonlinear optical response characteristics, is the focus of the Theoretical Semiconductor Optics and Photonics Group. The research topics under investigation span a variety of issues. With regard to ultrafast (femtosecond) processes in semiconductors, an important issue is whether semiconductors exhibit nonlinear optical coherence properties similar to those of atoms. While atoms are simple optical systems with "nice" nonlinear coherent effects, semiconductors, being mechanically robust solid materials, are better suited for device applications. However, optical nonlinearities, including nonlinear coherent optical effects, are strongly influenced by many-particle effects such as scattering of electrons in the semiconductor as well as more complicated quantum mechanical electronic correlations. Starting from the Hamilton operator characterizing the coupled semiconductor-light system and numerically solving the corresponding equations of motion, such as Green’s functions equations of motion or density matrix equations, we investigate fundamental many-particle effects in semiconductor quantum wells, semiconductor microcavities and other relevant semiconductor systems.