COHERENT-LIGHT SCATTERING IN AN AHARONOV-BOHM GEOMETRY OF QUANTUM-WELLS

This paper discusses the possibility of the transfer of electronic Aharonov-Bohm phase factors to light in double-quantum-well structures in magnetic fields. The open nature of semiconductor quantum wells permits a new type of coherent light scattering by means of certain interband transitions which preserve the positional indeterminacy of electronic states in Aharonov-Bohm superpositions. The modes of the coherently scattered light are determined by the magnetic flux per unit length between the wells. The calculation shows that the scattering mechanism can be quite efficient and may be used as an optical probe of ballistic electrons whose wavefunctions do not suffer a reduction while traversing the wells.