Nondegenerate Two-And Three-Photon Nonlinearities In Semiconductors

Two-photon absorption, 2PA, in semiconductors is enhanced by two orders of magnitude due to intermediate-state resonance enhancement, ISRE, for very nondegenerate (ND) photon energies. Associated with this enhancement in loss is enhancement of the nonlinear refractive index, n2. Even larger enhancement of three-photon absorption is calculated and observed. These large nonlinearities have implications for applications including ND two-photon gain and twophoton semiconductor lasers. Calculations for enhancement of ND-2PA in quantum wells is also presented showing another order of magnitude increase in 2PA. Potential devices include room temperature gated infrared detectors for LIDAR and all-optical switches