Shallow impurities in V-groove quantum wires

Abstract

We calculate the binding energies for shallow impurities in V-groove $\mathrm{GaAs}/{\mathrm{Al}}_{x}{\mathrm{Ga}}_{1\ensuremath{-}x}\mathrm{As}$ quantum wires using a variational technique. The carrier ground states are calculated by an effective potential method together with a suitable coordinate transformation that allows the decoupling of the two-dimensional wave function. This method enables a detailed calculation of binding energies, providing an efficient tool for the study of impurity-related properties in V-groove wires. We show that the lateral confinement of the V-groove potential localizes the impurity wave function very effectively in the central region of the quantum wire.