Excitonic fine structure of elongated InAs/InP quantum dots

Abstract

The bright exciton splitting in nanosystems and its origins are of primary importance for quantum-dot-based entangled-photon-pair generation. In this paper, I investigate excitonic energies and fine structure for million-atom InAs/InP quantum dots using many-body theory in conjunction with the empirical tight-binding method. Whereas the phenomenological theories relate the fine-structure splitting to quantum-dot-shape asymmetry, using an atomistic approach I demonstrate that for certain elongated quantum-dot shapes the bright exciton splitting can be significantly reduced. I demonstrate that strain effects play an essential role as the main contribution to the bright exciton splitting in InAs/InP quantum dots and observe highly reduced fine-structure splitting for high-symmetry quantum dots without wetting layer. I report the ``intrinsic'' fine-structure splitting, due to the underlying crystal lattice, to be generally significantly larger than the values predicted by the empirical pseudopotential calculations. Finally, I study excitonic properties of alloyed InAsP quantum dots and demonstrate that alloying effects can significantly reduce fine-structure splitting even in significantly elongated quantum dots.