Strongly coupled interface electronic states and interface phonon mode at GaP/Si(001)

Abstract

Ultrafast carrier and phonon dynamics at the buried heterointerface of GaP/Si(001) are investigated by means of two-color pump-probe reflectivity measurements. The carrier-induced reflectivity signal exhibits a resonant enhancement at pump-photon energies of 1.4 eV, which can be assigned to an optical transition between electronic interface states. The transient reflectivity is modulated by a coherent oscillation at 2 THz, whose amplitude also becomes maximum at 1.4 eV. The observed resonant behavior of the phonon mode in combination with a characteristic wavelength-dependence of, both, its frequency and initial phase, strongly indicate that the 2-THz mode is a difference-combination mode of a GaP-like and a Si-like phonon at the heterointerface and that this second-order scattering process can be enhanced by a double resonance involving the interfacial electronic states.

References in corpus (4)

• Sub-picosecond acoustic pulses at buried GaP/Si interfaces
• Coherent optical and acoustic phonons generated at lattice-matched GaP/Si(001) heterointerfaces
• Second-harmonic generation as probe for structural and electronic properties of buried GaP/Si(001) interfaces
• Separation of interface and substrate carrier dynamics at a heterointerface based on coherent optical phonons