A theoretical study of the propagation of short light pulses in semiconductor slabs containing excitons has been performed using the scattering-state technique and the steepest-descent method. These methods have allowed us to calculate numerically and to describe analytically the temporary behavior of the dielectric polarization inside the films as well as the time-resolved optical transmission spectra. The inhomogeneous broadening of exciton resonances has been taken into account within a local model. The appearance of a grating of the dielectric polarization in a semiconductor film illuminated by a short light pulse is predicted. This grating, which is due to interfering exciton polaritons, moves backward with respect to the light-propagation direction. We have shown that reabsorption and re-emission of photons by excitons in quantum wells and semiconductor films have a crucial effect on the coherent time-resolved spectra of these structures. The time-resolved transmission decay rate is found to depend on the thickness of semiconductor films with inhomogeneously broadened exciton resonances, which is not the case for a purely homogeneously broadened exciton. This fact, which follows from the energy dependence of the polariton damping in the former case, has also been explained in terms of multiple reabsorption–re-emission of photons by excitons.

• Received 28 July 1999

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.60.16788