Intersublevel polaron dephasing in self-assembled quantum dots

Polaron dephasing processes are investigated in InAs/GaAs dots using far-infrared transient four wave mixing (FWM) spectroscopy. We observe an oscillatory behavior in the FWM signal shortly (< 5 ps) after resonant excitation of the lowest energy conduction band transition due to coherent acoustic phonon generation. The subsequent single exponential decay yields long intraband dephasing times of 90 ps. We find good agreement between our measured and calculated FWM dynamics, and show that both real and virtual acoustic phonon processes are necessary to explain the temperature dependence of the polarization decay.