Many-body effects in the propagation of short pulses in a semiconductor amplifier

The semiconductor Maxwell-Bloch equations provide a model that is grounded in the fundamental physics of semiconductors which include a variety of many body effects. Many of these effects are particularly noticeable when the semiconductor is probed with ultrashort pulses. We present computational results describing the computed behavior of model equations which describe the propagation of femto-second pulses in bulk GaAs. It is shown how the inclusion of additional physics modifies the predictions of the model. Among the effects that are discussed are plasma heating, plasma cooling, self-focusing, and memory effects.