Femtosecond population inversion and stimulated emission of dense Dirac fermions in graphene.
We show that strongly photoexcited graphene monolayers with 35 fs pulses quasi-instantaneously build up a broadband, inverted Dirac fermion population. Optical gain emerges and directly manifests itself via a negative conductivity at the near-infrared region for the first 200 fs, where stimulated emission completely compensates absorption loss in the graphene layer. Our experiment-theory comparison with two distinct electron and hole chemical potentials reproduce absorption saturation and gain at 40 fs, revealing, particularly, the evolution of the transient state from a hot classical gas to a dense quantum fluid with increasing the photoexcitation.
Ames Laboratory and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA.
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Li
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Luo
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Hupalo
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Zhang
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Tringides
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Schmalian
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Wang