Optical activity of quantum wells

We report on the observation of optical activity of quantum wells resulting in the conversion of the light polarization state controlled by the light propagation direction. The polarization conversion is detected in reflection measurements. We show that a pure $s$-polarized light incident on a quantum well is reflected as an elliptically polarized wave. The signal is drastically enhanced in the vicinity of the light-hole exciton resonance. We show that the polarization conversion is caused by the spin-orbit splitting of the light hole states and the birefringence of the studied structure. The bulk inversion asymmetry constant $β_{h} \approx 0.14$ eVÅ, is determined for the ground light hole subband in a 10 nm ZnSe/ZnMgSSe quantum well.