THE ELECTRON-HOLE PLASMA IN CUBIC ZNTE AND ZNSE CRYSTALS

We report investigations of optical nonlinearities in the cubic II-VI compounds ZnSe and ZnTe. Studies of luminescence and reflectivity at low excitation and at low temperatures were used to characterize the quality of the samples. Carefully thinned and etched samples show spectra comparable to the ones observed on cleaved surfaces. Measurements of luminescence at high excitation and at low temperatures show spectra which leads to the assumption that an electron-hole plasma is created. With pump and probe beam spectroscopy we obtained further informations about the formation of an electron-hole plasma. The results concerning optical gain are compared with previous measurements on CdS and CdSe and with results for ZnSe and ZnTe which are obtained with the strip length method by other authors. © 1989.