Abstract
We have examined theoretically how the temperature and the hydrostatic pressure affect the total optical absorption coefficients, the total refractive index changes, and the second harmonic generation coefficients for GaAs/GaAlAs zigzag quantum well structure. The diagonalisation method and the effective mass approximation have been used to obtain the numerical solution of the Schrodinger equation and energy levels, respectively. The analytical expressions of the optical properties were obtained by using the compact density matrix and iterative methods. When the temperature (hydrostatic pressure) is increased, the resonant peaks' positions of the total optical absorption coefficients and the relative refractive index changes are shifted to higher energies/blueshift (lower energies/red-shift) with amplitude increment (decrement). Additionally, the resonant peak position of the second harmonic generation coefficient shifts to higher energies/blueshift (lower energies) and also decrease (increase) in magnitude with increasing temperature (hydrostatic pressure).