Impact of propagation effects on intersubband Rabi flopping in semiconductor quantum wells

We investigate intersubband Rabi flopping in modulation-doped semiconductor quantum wells with and without the propagation effects,respectively.It is shown that propagation effects have a larger impact on Rabi flopping than the nonlinearities rooted from electron-electron interactions in multiple quantum wells. By using ultrashortπpulses,an almost complete population inversion exists if the propagation effects are not considered;while no complete population inversion occurs in the presence of propagation effects. Furthermore,the magnitude of the impact of propagation effects may be controlled by varying the carrier density.