Theory of radiative recombination from the metastable excited states of quantum dots

Abstract

The radiative recombination of an exciton (electron-hole pair) confined in a semiconductor quantum dot is studied within a general model based on the effective-mass approximation. The dependence of the photoluminescence spectrum on the size of the dot and the magnetic field describe well a series of recent experimental results. In particular, a characteristic splitting of the main photoluminescence peak into a doublet or triplet is observed at the critical size and magnetic field, as a consequence of the appearance of metastable states in the exciton spectrum.