Optical birefringence of ultrathin AlxGa1−xAs-GaAs multilayer heterostructures

Abstract
The measured birefringence of ultrathin AlxGa1−xAs‐GaAs multilayers grown by molecular beam epitaxy is shown to result from the difference in the effective refractive indices for transverse electric and magnetic polarizations and from the quantum‐size effect of the one‐dimensionally confined carriers in the GaAs potential wells.