Experimental evaluation of the carrier lifetime in GaAs grown at low temperature

The relaxation dynamics of nonequilibrium charge carriers in gallium arsenide epitaxial films grown by molecular-beam epitaxy at low temperatures has been studied. The growth conditions of the epitaxial layer provided an excess arsenic content of 1.2% in the layer. In a material of this kind, the carrier lifetime is $<$ 1 ps. To examine carrier relaxation in the femtosecond range, an original scheme for measuring the refractive index dynamics was developed on the basis of the pump-probe technique. The lifetime of nonequilibrium charge carriers was evaluated to be (200 $\pm$ 35) fs.