arXiv · cond-mat/0506408
Optical absorption in quantum dots: Coupling to longitudinal optical phonons treated exactly
Abstract
Optical transitions in a semiconductor quantum dot are theoretically investigated, with emphasis on the coupling to longitudinal optical phonons, and including excitonic effects. When limiting to a finite number of $m$ electron and $n$ hole levels in the dot, the model can be solved exactly within numerical accuracy. Crucial for this to work is the absence of dispersion of the phonons. A suitable orthogonalization procedure leaves only $m(m+1)/2+n(n+1)/2-2$ phonon modes to be coupled to the electronic system. We calculate the linear optical polarization following a delta pulse excitation, and by a subsequent Fourier transformation the resulting optical absorption. This strict result is compared with a frequently used approximation modeling the absorption as a convolution between spectral functions of electron and hole, which tends to overestimate the effect of the phonon coupling. Numerical results are given for two electron and three hole states in a quantum dot made from the polar material CdSe. Parameter values are chosen such that a quantum dot with a resonant sublevel distance can be compared with a nonresonant one.
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T. Stauber, R. Zimmermann. 2006-01-31. Optical absorption in quantum dots: Coupling to longitudinal optical phonons treated exactly. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.73.115303
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