Photoluminescence kinetics of indirect excitons in GaAs/AlxGa12xAs coupled quantum wells

Photoluminescence ~PL! kinetics of long-lifetime indirect excitons in a GaAs/AlxGa12xAs coupled quantum well characterized by a small in-plane random potential was studied at temperatures 1.5<T<15 K for a wide range of exciton densities. Strong deviations of the indirect exciton PL kinetics from monoexponential PL rise/decay were observed at low temperatures and high exciton densities. In particular, right after the excitation is switched off, the spectrally integrated indirect exciton PL intensity increased sharply. Simultaneously, the indirect exciton energy distribution was observed to narrow significantly. The observed increase in intensity is attributed to the sharp increase of occupation of the optically active exciton states. The energy distribution narrowing is explained in terms of the phonon mediated exciton energy relaxation in momentum space and in the in-plane random potential. @S0163-1829~99!00104-6#