Picosecond photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy of GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells

A synchronous pair of pulsed dye lasers is used to obtain continuous photoexcitation energy spectra of quantum well luminescence at fixed time delays following carrier generation, with picosecond time resolution. A measurement of the energy-dependent initial luminescence polarization of photoexcited carriers in GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells, from a pulsed optical pumping experiment, is presented as an illustration of the technique.