Coulomb effects between electrons in quantum box structures

Abstract

The effects of the Coulomb repulsion between electrons in single and multiple, vertically stacked quantum boxes are studied. We model the single electron states in quantum boxes as two-dimensional harmonic oscillator states and construct two-electron wavefunctions by the configuration interaction technique. Strong correlation effects determine the electronic structure of two electrons in a single quantum box. Based on the ground state two-electron wavefunction a variational trial function is constructed to examine the interaction effects between electrons in two, three, four, and N vertically stacked quantum boxes, each populated by a single electron. It is shown that the electron-electron interaction can lead to interesting polarization effects in multiple quantum boxes, if the relative strengths of the Coulomb interaction and the electron confining interaction are not too small. Numerical results based on GaAs materials parameters are presented.