Simultaneous influence of disorder and Coulomb interaction on photon echoes in semiconductors

Abstract
The effects of disorder and many-body interaction on the four-wave-mixing signal in semiconductor quantum wells are studied experimentally and theoretically. For weakly disordered samples it is shown that the combined influence of Coulomb and disorder effects leads to a characteristic photon-echo signal in time-resolved measurements and to oscillations in the time-integrated signal. Convincing agreement between experiment and theory is demonstrated.