Optical recombination of biexcitons in semiconductors
Abstract
We calculate the photoluminescence spectrum and lifetime of a biexciton in a semiconductor using Fermi's golden rule. Our biexciton wavefunction is obtained using a Quantum Monte Carlo calculation. We consider a recombination process where one of the excitons within the biexciton annihilates. For hole masses greater than or equal to the electron mass, we find that the surviving exciton is most likely to populate the ground state. We also investigate how the confinement of excitons in a quantum dot would modify the lifetime in the limit of a large quantum dot where confinement principally affects the centre of mass wavefunction. The lifetimes we obtain are in reasonable agreement with experimental values. Our calculation can be used as a benchmark for comparison with approximate methods.
Citation
Bauer , M , Keeling , J M J , Parish , M M , Lopez Rios , P & Littlewood , P B 2013 , ' Optical recombination of biexcitons in semiconductors ' , Physical Review. B, Condensed matter and materials physics , vol. 87 , no. 3 , 035302 . https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.87.035302
Publication
Physical Review. B, Condensed matter and materials physics
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1098-0121Type
Journal article
Rights
©2013 American Physical Society
Description
6 pages, 2 figuresCollections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.