Decoherence processes during optical manipulation of excitonic qubits in semiconductor quantum dots

Using photoluminescence spectroscopy, we have investigated the nature of Rabi oscillation damping during optical manipulation of excitonic qubits in self-assembled quantum dots. Rabi oscillations were recorded by varying the pulse amplitude for fixed pulse durations between 4ps and 10ps. Up to five periods are visible, making it possible to quantify the excitation dependent damping. We find that this damping is more pronounced for shorter pulse widths and show that its origin is the nonresonant excitation of carriers in the wetting layer, most likely involving bound-to-continuum and continuum-to-bound transitions.