No Arabic abstract
Excitons and charged excitons (trions) are investigated in ZnSe-based quantum well structures with (Zn,Be,Mg)Se and (Zn,Mg)(S,Se) barriers by means of magneto-optical spectroscopy. Binding energies of negatively () and positively (X+) charged excitons are measured as functions of quantum well width, free carrier density and in external magnetic fields up to 47 T. The binding energy of shows a strong increase from 1.4 to 8.9 meV with decreasing quantum well width from 190 to 29 A. The binding energies of X+ are about 25% smaller than the binding energy in the same structures. The magnetic field behavior of and X+ binding energies differ qualitatively. With growing magnetic field strength, increases its binding energy by 35-150%, while for X+ it decreases by 25%. Zeeman spin splittings and oscillator strengths of excitons and trions are measured and discussed.
We present a detailed investigation of excitonic absorption in $Zn_{0.69}Cd_{0.31}Se/ZnSe$ quantum wells under the application of a perpendicular magnetic field. The large energy separation between heavy- and light-hole excitons allows us to clearly resolve and identify magneto-excitonic absorption resonant with the continuum edge of the 1S heavy-hole exciton. Experimental values of the exciton binding energy are compared with results of a theoretical model that includes the exciton-phonon interaction. The remarkable agreemeent found unambiguously indicates the predominant polaronic character of excitons in ZnSe-based heterostructures.
Resonance dielectric response of excitons is studied for the high-quality GaAs/InGaAs heterostructures with wide asymmetric quantum wells (QWs). To highlight effects of the QW asymmetry, we have grown and studied several heterostructures with nominally square QWs as well as with triangle-like QWs. Several quantum confined exciton states are experimentally observed as narrow exciton resonances with various profiles. A standard approach for the phenomenological analysis of the profiles is generalized by introducing of different phase shifts for the light waves reflected from the QWs at different exciton resonances. Perfect agreement of the phenomenological fit to the experimentally observed exciton spectra for high-quality structures allowed us to obtain reliable parameters of the exciton resonances including the exciton transition energies, the radiative broadenings, and the phase shifts. A direct numerical solution of Schr{o}dinger equation for the heavy-hole excitons in asymmetric QWs is used for microscopic modeling of the exciton resonances. Remarkable agreement with the experiment is achieved when the effect of indium segregation during the heterostructure growth is taken into account. The segregation results in a modification of the potential profile, in particular, in an asymmetry of the nominally square QWs.
A new mechanism for exciton lasing in ZnSe/ZnCdSe quantum wells is proposed. Lasing, occurring below the lowest exciton line, may be associated with a BCS-like condensed (coherent) exciton state. This state is most stable at low temperatures for densities in the transition region separating the exciton Bose gas and the coherent exciton state. Calculations show the gain region to lie below the exciton line and to be separated from the absorption regime by a transparency region of width, for example, about 80 meV for a 90 Angstrom ZnSe/Zn_(0.75)Cd_(0.25)Se quantum well. Experimental observation of the transparency region using differential spectroscopy would confirm this picture.
The difficulty of describing excitons in semiconducting SWNTs analytically lies with the fact that excitons can neither be considered strictly 1D nor 2D objects. However, the situation changes in the case of metallic nanotubes where, by virtue of screening from gapless metallic subbands, the radius of the exciton becomes much larger than the radius of the nanotube $R_text{ex}gg R$. Taking advantage of this, we develop the theory of excitons in metallic nanotubes, determining that their binding energy is about $0.08v/R$, in agreement with the existing experimental data. Additionally, because of the presence of the gapless subbands, there are processes where bound excitons are scattered into unbound electron-hole pairs belonging to the gapless subbands. Such processes lead to a finite exciton lifetime and the broadening of its spectral function. We calculate the corresponding decay rate of the excitons.
Coherent optical spectroscopy such as four-wave mixing and photon echo generation deliver detailed information on the energy levels involved in optical transitions through the analysis of polarization of the coherent response. In semiconductors, it can be applied to distinguish between different exciton complexes, which is a highly non-trivial problem in optical spectroscopy. We develop a simple approach based on photon echo polarimetry, in which polar plots of the photon echo amplitude are measured as function of the angle $varphi$ between the linear polarizations of the two exciting pulses. The rosette-like polar plots reveal a distinct difference between the neutral and charged exciton (trion) optical transitions in semiconductor nanostructures. We demonstrate this experimentally by photon echo polarimetry of a 20-nm-thick CdTe/(Cd,Mg)Te quantum well at temperature of 1.5~K. Applying narrow-band optical excitation we selectively excite different exciton complexes including the exciton, the trion, and the donor-bound exciton D$^0$X. We find that polarimetry of the photon echo on the trion and D$^0$X is substantially different from the exciton: The echoes of the trion and D$^0$X are linearly polarized at the angle $2varphi$ with respect to the first pulse polarization and their amplitudes are weakly dependent on $varphi$. While on the exciton the photon echo is co-polarized with the second exciting pulse and its amplitude scales as $cosvarphi$.