Effects of symmetry-breaking perturbations on excitonic states bound to systems of reduced symmetry

Abstract

Using an invariant expansion, we build an Hamiltonian describing the influence of the crystal-field, the electron-hole exchange interaction, and any symmetry-breaking perturbations on the fine structure of excitons bound to systems of reduced symmetry: D2d, C3v, and C2v. Several perturbations are considered, including, but not limited to, an electric field, a magnetic field, a strain field, and their combinations. For each symmetry system considered, symmetrized excitonic wave functions, build from heavy- and light-holes states, are used to expand the Hamiltonian in the form of matrices, whose eigenvalues directly provide the energy of the excitonic states and whose eigenstates can be used to determine oscillator strengths of optical transitions. Using this model, we satisfactorily reproduce the excitonic emission observed from nitrogen dyads in GaAs and tellurium dyads in strained ZnSe. We also present Hamiltonians for independent heavy- and light-hole subsystems. Comparing the two models, we demonstrate that the splitting observed in strained quantum dots of C2v symmetry does not necessarily imply a significant anisotropic exchange interaction. This splitting can be produced by a weak coupling between heavy- and light-hole bands.