Very large blue and red Stark shifts of the excitonic transition in InGaAs-InP-InAsP antisymmetric coupled quantum wells

Abstract

A new strained InGaAs-InP-InAsP antisymmetric coupled quantum well (CQW) structure with both very large blue and red quantum-confined Stark shifts for the first heavy-hole-to-electron excitonic transition, Ehh1fEe1, is studied theoretically in this paper. In the antisymmetric coupled quantum well, an antisymmetric-like pair of potential profiles between the shallow-deep conduction band profile and the deepshallow valence band profile are formed. The sub-band eigen-energies, E, and the associated envelope wave functions in the CQW structures with or without an applied electric field are calculated by the transfer-matrix method. The effect of strain on the pseudomorphic layers has been taken into account. Results indicate that the strained InGaAs-InP-InAsP antisymmetric CQW structure exhibits significant enhancement of the blue and red Stark effects in the Ehh1fEe1 transition. The influences of various antisymmetric CQW structural parameters, such as the total well width, the individual well width, the central barrier thickness and the composition of the strained layer on the quantum-confined Stark shift, as well as the envelope wave function overlap, are studied systematically. These strong Stark effects in the antisymmetric CQW structure may have potential applications in sophisticated new electronic devices, such as optical switching devices.