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Giant Kerr–quintic–septic nonlinearities in semiconductor quantum wells

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Abstract

The higher order nonlinearities are investigated in asymmetric semiconductor double quantum well nanostructures with nearly vanishing absorption by electromagnetically induced transparency technique. The existence of giant Kerr, quintic, as well as septic nonlinearities, are identified in the quantum well nanostructures, whose peak values of \({\chi }^{(3)}\), \({\chi }^{(5)}\), and \({\chi }^{(7)}\) are found to be \(\sim {10}^{-13}\;{\text{m}}^{2}/{\text{V}}^{2}\), \(\sim {10}^{-25}\;{\text{m}}^{4}/{\text{V}}^{4}\) and \(\sim {10}^{-37}\,{\text{m}}^{6}/{\text{V}}^{6}\), respectively, at 9.93 µm pumping wavelength. We demonstrate that not only the magnitude of Rabi frequencies or the detuning of the controlling fields, but also the relative phase of the applied fields can enhance these nonlinearities, and shift their peak values to any desired probe frequency. The giant higher-order nonlinearities identified in these quantum well nanostructures cannot be overlooked since the trait of a number of nonlinear optical phenomena critically relies on the nature and magnitude of these nonlinearities.

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Data Availability Statement

This manuscript has associated data in a data repository. [Authors’ comment: The authors declare that all data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.]

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Acknowledgements

Authors NB and MN thank University of Science & Technology Meghalaya, India for the financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Science and Technology Meghalaya, Ri-Bhoi, 793101, India

    Monika Nath & Nitu Borgohain

  2. Department of Physics, Sarala Birla University, Ranchi, Jharkhand, 835103, India

    Rohit Mukherjee

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  1. Monika Nath
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Correspondence to Rohit Mukherjee.

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Nath, M., Mukherjee, R. & Borgohain, N. Giant Kerr–quintic–septic nonlinearities in semiconductor quantum wells. Eur. Phys. J. Plus 137, 903 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-03106-7

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