Definitive observation of the dark triplet ground state of charged excitons in high magnetic fields

The ground state of negatively charged excitons (trions) in high magnetic fields is shown to be a dark triplet state, confirming long-standing theoretical predictions. Photoluminescence (PL), reflection, and PL excitation spectroscopy of CdTe quantum wells reveal that the dark triplet trion has lower energy than the singlet trion above 24 Tesla. The singlet-triplet crossover is hidden (i.e., the spectral lines themselves do not cross due to different Zeeman energies), but is confirmed by temperature-dependent PL above and below 24 T. The data also show two bright triplet states.