Nonlinear optical rectification in laterally-coupled quantum well wires with applied electric field

Nonlinear optical rectification coefficientχ0(2) in laterally-coupled AlxGa1−xAs/GaAs quantum well wires with an applied electric field is theoretically investigated using the effective mass approximation as well as the numerical energy levels and wavefunctions of electrons. We find that χ0(2) is greatly influenced by the electric field as well as both the distance and the radius of the coupled system. A blue shift of χ0(2) with increasing electric field is exhibited while a red shift followed by a blue shift with increasing distance or radius is exhibited. A nonmonotonic behavior can be found in the resonant peak values of χ0(2) along with the increase of the electric field, the distance or the radius. One or two of the following physical mechanisms: the increased localization of the ground and first-excited states, the reduced coupling and the reduced quantum confinement effect are applied to elucidate the results above. Our results play a potential role in infrared photodetectors based on the coupled system.