Optical properties and symmetry optimization of spectrally (excitonically) uniform site-controlled GaAs pyramidal quantum dots

Abstract

GaAs quantum dots (QDs) have recently emerged as state-of-the-art semiconductor sources of polarization-entangled photon pairs, however, without site-control capability. In this work, we present a systematic study of epitaxially grown GaAs/AlxGa1-xAs site-controlled pyramidal QDs possessing unrivaled excitonic uniformity in comparison to their InGaAs counterparts or GaAs QDs fabricated by other techniques. We have experimentally and systematically investigated the binding energy of biexcitons, highlighting the importance of the uniformity of all excitonic lines, rather than concentrating solely on the uniformity of the neutral exciton as a typical figure of merit, as it is normally done in the literature. We present optical signatures of GaAs QDs within a range of ∼250 meV with a remarkable uniformity within each individual sample, the ability to excite the biexciton state resonantly, and a systematic study of the fine-structure splitting (FSS) values—features important for polarization entangled photon emission. While, in general, we observe relatively large FSS distribution and associated non-uniformities, we discuss several strategies to suppress the average FSS values to <15 μeV.