Coherent response to optical pulses in quantum wells

We present a theoretical analysis of the coherent response of quantum wells to one or two short optical pulses. A bosonic description is used for the two physically different cases of undoped and doped systems. Coherent-control and optical beat experiments in intrinsic systems are studied in terms of the induced electrical polarisation associated with non-interacting excitons. In the case of a doped quantum well, we use a simple bosonisation procedure to show that the non-linear response presents exactly the same Fermi edge singularity as the well established one in linear response.