Storage of photonic signals in semiconductor heterostructures

✍ Scribed by A. Wixforth; C. Rocke; S. Zimmermann; J.P. Kotthaus

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 302 KB
• Volume: 47
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0167-9317
• DOI: 10.1016/s0167-9317(99)00223-3

✦ Synopsis

Photonic signals are efficiently stored in semiconductor-based optical memory cells. The incident photons are efficiently converted into electron-hole pairs that are locally stored in a quantum well being laterally modulated by either static or dynamic tunable superlattices. At large superlattice amplitudes these spatially separated pairs can be held in the lateral superlattices for times many orders of magnitude longer than their natural lifetimes. At an arbitrary chosen time they can be released in a short and intense flash of incoherent light, triggered by flattening the superlattice amplitude.