Non-trivial dependence of spectral characteristics of excitons in quantum wells on the resonant optical excitation power

Basic exciton parameters, the energy of exciton transition and the radiative and nonradiative broadenings, are experimentally studied by means of reflectance spectroscopy for a heterostructure with the 14-nm GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well. Particular attention is paid to the nonradiative broadening which is sensitive to optical creation of free carriers and long-lived nonradiative excitons. A sublinear increase of the broadening of the heavy-hole and light-hole exciton resonances is observed when the light-hole exciton resonance is excited with increasing power. A simple model is developed, which allows one to well reproduce the observed dependence.