Abstract
Natural birefringence in a cubic crystal along (011) direction arises from the wave-vector dependence of the dielectric tensor. The difference in the refractive indices for linear eigenpolarizations along (100) and (011) direction varies from δn ∝ 10−6 in the transparent region1 to δn ∝ 10−1 at the excitonic resonance.2 In zinc-blende crystals there are two microscopic mechanisms for the excitonic birefringence. These are the spin-orbit interaction, which mixes singlet and triplet states via the k-linear term in the excitonic Hamiltonian,3 and the heavy-light mass splitting of the exciton branch. These mechanisms give additive contributions to δn and can not be discriminated in the linear experiments. We report the picosecond time-resolved measurements of the pump-induced reduction of natural birefringence. We measure the heavy-light exciton splitting at the light wavevector and show that in unstrained ZnSe, the spin-orbit mechanism of the optical anisotropy dominates at the excitonic resonance.
© 1999 Optical Society of America
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