Tuning the carrier tunneling in a single quantum dot with a magnetic field in Faraday geometry

Abstract

We report on an increase in the carrier tunneling time in a single quantum dot (QD) with a magnetic field in Faraday geometry using photocurrent spectroscopy. A nearly 60\% increase in hole tunneling time is observed with an applied magnetic field equal to 9 T. For a truncated pyramid QD, hole tunnels out faster at the lateral edge of the QD due to the reduced barrier height. The magnetic field in Faraday geometry shrinks the hole wave function at the center of QD plane, which weakens the tunneling at lateral edge and increases the average tunneling time. This mechanism also works for electron but the effect is smaller. The electron wave function is more localized at the center of the QD due to the uniform confining potential, therefore the relatively weak shrinkage caused by the magnetic field does not reduce the tunneling rate significantly.