Original research articleEffect of position-dependent effective mass on nonlinear optical properties in a quantum well

•A smooth effective mass distribution has been proposed.•The analytic expressions of the THG coefficients, OA coefficients and RIC in a quantum well using position-dependent effective mass and a constant effective mass are obtained.•The position-dependent effective mass has a significant impact on the nonlinear optical properties in a quantum well.

In this study, the effect of position-dependent effective mass (PDM) on the nonlinear optical properties in a GaAs/AlAs semiconductor quantum well (QW) are intensively studied. Calculations are performed using both the position-dependent effective mass and a constant effective mass within the framework of the compact-density-matrix approach, iterative method, and coordinate transformation method. We have calculated the third-harmonic generation (THG) coefficients, the optical absorption (OA) coefficients and the refractive index changes (RIC) as a function of the incident photon frequency and obtained the energy eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the system through solving the Schrödinger equation. The results show that spatially varying electron effective mass has a significant impact on the nonlinear optical properties in a quantum well.