The dynamics of charge currents ballistically injected in GaAs bulk and quantum wells are spatially and temporally resolved. The electrons and holes are injected with oppositely directed velocities without the use of accelerating fields by quantum interference between two photon absorption of a 200fs, 1430nm fundamental pulse and one photon absorption of the corresponding second harmonic pulse. The subsequent charge motion is followed with 200fs temporal and 1nm spatial resolution by using tightly focused optical differential transmission techniques that are dependent on the relative phase of the incident pump pulses. Initially, the electrons and holes ballistically separate by up to 20nm, and a space charge field forms, which decelerates the carriers. Within this 1ps regime, the momentum relaxes by electron-hole and phonon scatterings, and the space charge field restores the electrons and holes to a common position; on time scales long compared to 1ps, ambipolar diffusion and recombination complete the return of the system to equilibrium. A rigid shift (damped simple harmonic oscillator) model for the electron motion reproduces the key features in the data, and the procedure for extracting the spatiotemporal dynamics of the electrons is shown to be immune to energy relaxation effects and forgiving of nonlinear saturation.

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