arXiv · 1706.04093
Limited accuracy of conduction band effective mass equations for semiconductor quantum dots
Abstract
Effective mass equations are the simplest models of carrier states in a semiconductor structures that reduce the complexity of a solid-state system to Schr\"odinger- or Pauli-like equations resempling those well known from quantum mechanics textbooks. Here we present a systematic derivation of a conduction-band effective mass equation for a self-assembled semiconductor quantum dot in a magnetic field from the 8-band kp theory. The derivation allows us to classify various forms of the effective mass equations in terms of a hierarchy of approximations. We assess the accuracy of the approximations in calculating selected spectral and spin-related characteristics. We indicate the importance of preserving the off-diagonal terms of the valence band Hamiltonian and argue that an effective mass theory cannot reach satisfactory accuracy without self-consistently including non-parabolicity corrections and renormalization of kp parameters. Quantitative comparison with the 8-band kp results supports the phenomenological Roth-Lax-Zwerdling formula for the g-factor in a nanostructure.
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Adam Mielnik-Pyszczorski, Krzysztof Gawarecki, Paweł Machnikowski. 2017-06-13. Limited accuracy of conduction band effective mass equations for semiconductor quantum dots. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-21043-3
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