We investigate the interaction and dephasing of the excitons in wide ${\mathrm{Z}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{S}\mathrm{e}/\mathrm{Z}\mathrm{n}}_{0.94}{\mathrm{Mg}}_{0.06}\mathrm{Se}$ quantum wells by spectrally resolved, femtosecond four-wave mixing (FWM). Polarization-dependent measurements indicate that excitation-induced dephasing is the dominant FWM process. The biexcitons of the center-of-mass quantized heavy and light hole excitons are observed, showing binding energies of 3.5 meV. We determine the exciton scattering cross sections with incoherent and coherent excitons. The coherent cross section is found to be larger than the incoherent cross section, which is attributed to a stronger Pauli repulsion for coherent excitons. The exciton interaction rates with acoustic and optical phonons are deduced by their temperature dependencies. The acoustic-phonon scattering is found to be strongly reduced in the investigated wide wells due to the reduced accessible phonon wave vector.

• Received 26 June 1997

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.57.1791