Laser effects on donor states in low-dimensional semiconductor heterostructures

Abstract

A theoretical study of the effects of intense laser fields on the ground-state binding energies of donor impurities in low-dimensional semiconductor heterostructures is performed. The laser-heterostructure interaction is treated within an extended dressed-atom approach, so that, for a laser tuned far below any resonances, the effects of the laser-semiconductor interaction correspond to a renormalization of the semiconductor energy gap and conduction/valence effective masses. Calculations are performed for donors in $\mathrm{GaAs}\text{\ensuremath{-}}(\mathrm{Ga},\mathrm{Al})\mathrm{As}$ quantum wells, cylindrical quantum-well wires, and spherical quantum dots. The binding energies of donors in low-dimensional systems increase with increasing laser intensity, and for a fixed intensity, the influence of the laser is stronger for small detunings. Results obtained within the extended dressed-atom approach are compared with previous calculations performed by using a simplified high-frequency limit of the Kramers-Henneberger approach.