Nonlinear optical interactions in semiconductors

The optical pumping technique in GaAs has led to the development of a novel and highly sensitive optical temperature sensor. Completed is the experiment on two photon optical pumping in ZnO. An external cavity semiconductor laser involving ZnO as a gain medium was demonstrated under two-photon excitation. This laser should have a major impact on the development of tunable blue-green radiation for submarine communication. Completed is a paper on heat buildup in semiconductor platelets. New lasers are used to explore elementary excitation in optical thin film layers of semiconductors. This has led to the first demonstration of the feasibility of room temperature operation of a tunable coherent source involving multiple quantum well material. Completed is the construction of a simple remote (non-contact) temperature sensor to directly measure heat buildup in semiconductor materials as a result of high power optical laser excitation. Finally, an experiment involving optical frequency mixing to probe electrodynamics in the GaAlAs multiple quantumwell and superlattice structures, utilizing two recently constructed tunabel laser systems,has been successful. Attempts were focused on observing a number of new optical effects including nonlinear absorption and transmission phenomena, enhanced spontaneous and stimulated light scattering processes, etc. The construction of an external cavity semiconductor HgCdTe has been successful.