Theoretical analysis of resonant magnetotunneling spectroscopy of holes

Abstract

We calculate the hole energy band structure in GaAs-AlAs Quantum Wells (QWs) in high in-plane magnetic fields and simulate Resonant Magnetotunneling Spectroscopy (RMS) experiments, recently proposed as a probe of the hole energy dispersion. We find that the high magnetic fields used in RMS result in small modifications of the QW hole subbands in thin QWs. However, for wide QWs or very large magnetic fields, the field strongly affects the hole dispersion by changing the heavy hole-light hole mixing. We give a simple expression to evaluate to which extent the mixing is modified as a function of the QW width and field strength.