Stability of Excited Exciton States in Semiconductor Quantum Dots Under a Lateral Electric Field

Abstract

The effect of the lateral electric field (LEF) on the excited and ground state stability of an exciton ([Formula: see text]) confined in a parabolic cylindrical quantum dot (QD) was estimated in this study. The calculation was performed in the framework of single-band effective mass theory using a variational approach. Our results revealed that the ground state binding energy of [Formula: see text] decreases with increasing the cylindrical QD radius until the exciton stability is lost at moderate LEF strength. By increasing the LEF strength, the excited heavy-hole ([Formula: see text]) can create an excited state [Formula: see text] or excited state [Formula: see text] of [Formula: see text], and the results indicate that the first state is more stable. In contrast, when an excited electron ([Formula: see text]) combines with an excited hole ([Formula: see text]) or unexcited hole ([Formula: see text]), it contains no split excited states for [Formula: see text] with less binding energy than the state [Formula: see text]. Comparing our previous results of donor impurity [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text], we found that [Formula: see text] has a more stable ground state than [Formula: see text]. Moreover, the excited [Formula: see text] states are more stable than the excited states of [Formula: see text]. The quantum Stark shift (QSS) of the light- and heavy-hole exciton energy was explored, and a blue-shifted and quadratic QSS was observed. In contrast, for single particles (electron, heavy-hole and light hole), a red-shifted and linear QSS was observed.