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The excitonic optical absorption of GaAs bulk semiconductors under intense terahertz (THz) radiation is investigated numerically. The method of solving initial-value problems, combined with the perfect matched layer technique, is used to calculate the optical susceptibility. In the presence of a driving THz field, in addition to the usual exciton peaks, 2p replica of the dark 2p exciton and even-THz-photon-sidebands of the main exciton resonance emerge in the continuum above the band edge and below the main exciton resonance. Moreover, to understand the shift of the position of the main exciton peak under intense THz radiation, it is necessary to take into consideration both the dynamical Franz–Keldysh effect and ac Stark effect simultaneously. For moderate frequency fields, the main exciton peak decreases and broadens due to the field-induced ionization of the excitons with THz field increasing. However, for high frequency THz fields, the characteristics of the exciton recur even under very strong THz fields, which accords with the recent experimental results qualitatively.

We have performed a full numerical calculation of the Franz–Keldysh (FK) effect on magnetoexcitons in a bulk GaAs semiconductor. By employing an initial value method in combination with the application of a perfect matched layer, the numerical effort and storage size are dramatically reduced due to a significant reduction in both computed domain and number of base functions. In the absence of an electric field, the higher magnetoexcitonic peaks show distinct Fano lineshape due to the degeneracy with continuum states of the lower Landau levels. The magnetoexcitons that belong to the zeroth Landau level remain in bound states and lead to Lorentzian lineshape, because they are not degenerated with continuum states. In the presence of an electric field, the FK effect on each magnetoexcitonic resonance can be identified for high magnetic fields. However, for low magnetic fields, the FK oscillations dominate the spectrum structure in the vicinity of the bandgap edge and the magnetoexcitonic resonances dominate the spectrum structure of higher energies. In the moderate electric fields, the interplay of FK effect and magnetoexcitonic resonance leads to a complex and rich structure in the absorption spectrum.

The optical absorption of GaAs nanorings (NRs) under a dc electric field and a terahertz (THz) ac electric field applied in the plane containing the NRs is investigated theoretically. The NRs may enclose some magnetic flux in the presence of a magnetic field perpendicular to the NRs plane. Numerical calculation shows that the excitonic effects are essential to correctly describe the optical absorption in NRs. The applied lateral THz electric field, as well as the dc field leads to reduction, broadening and splitting of the exciton peak. In contrast to the presence of a dc field, significant optical absorption peak arises below the zero-field bandgap in the presence of a THz electric field at a certain frequency. The optical absorption spectrum depends evidently on the frequency and amplitude of the applied THz field and on the magnetic flux threading the NRs. This promises potential applications of NRs for magneto-optical and THz electro-optical sensing.

We have studied analytically the temporal characteristics of terahertz radiation emitted from a biased large-aperture photoconductive antenna triggered by an ultrashort optical pulse. We have included the effects of the finite lifetime and transient mobility dynamics of photogenerated carriers in the analysis. Succinct explicit expressions are obtained for the emitted radiation in the surface field and in the far field. The dependence of the waveforms of the radiated field on the fluence and duration of triggering optical pulse, carrier relaxation time and carrier lifetime are discussed in detail using the obtained expressions.

A kind of ultra-narrow dual-channel filter is proposed in principle and demonstrated experimentally. This filter is designed by means of two sampled fibre Bragg gratings (SFBGs), where one is periodic 0–π sampling and the other is symmetrical spatial sampling. The former can create two stopbands in the transmission spectra and the latter can produce two ultra-narrow passbands. Our filter has the 3-dB bandwidth of about 1 pm, whose value is two orders of magnitude less than the bandwidth of the traditional SFBG filters. The proposed filter has a merit that the channel spacing remains unchanged when tuning the filter.

On the basis of self-stability effect of four-wave mixings (FWMs) in high-nonlinear photonic-crystal fibres, a novel multi-wavelength erbium-doped fibre (EDF) laser is proposed and demonstrated experimentally at room temperature. The proposed lasers have the capacity of switching and tuning with excellent uniformity and stability. By means of adjusting the attenuators, the triple-, four-, or five-wavelength EDF lasers can be lasing simultaneously. With the assistance of the FWM self-stability function, the multi-wavelength spectrum is excellently stabilized with uniformity less than 0.9 dB.