THz sideband generation in multi quantum wells

Ac THz electric fields which couple strongly with intraband excitations in semiconductors can lead to spectral sidebands when an interband excitation is present. In this nonlinear mixing process a near-infrared (NIR) laser beam is mixed with a THz beam to generate sidebands around the NIR frequency with a frequency spacing equal to the THz frequency or multiples of it. In the last years this effect has been investigated in various semiconductor systems (i.e. in bulk GaAs or in multi quantum wells).
We investigated the third-order nonlinear mixing process between a near-infrared laser and a free-electron laser in an undoped symmetric AlGaAs/GaAs multi quantum well. Differently from the literature where electronic intersubband transitions were used, we are using the transition between the heavy-hole and light-hole states. This transition around 73 µm is pumped close to normal incidence by FELBE, the free-electron laser (FEL) of the Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf. The picosecond NIR laser is transmitted through the sample where the GaAs substrate has been etched away. It is focused on the entrance slit of the spectrometer of a Streak-camera system. With the Streak-camera temporal and spectral measurements are possible.
The n=+2 sideband conversion efficiency is of the order of 0,005% with respect to the incoming NIR intensity. Among other things we present the power dependency on NIR and FEL intensity and the resonance behavior with respect to the NIR and FEL wavelengths.