Controlling electronic and adiabatic isolation of quantum dots from the substrate: An ionization-energy theoretic study

TL;DR

This study uses ionization energy theory and the quantum adiabatic theorem to analyze how isolating quantum dots from their substrate affects dephasing mechanisms, highlighting the role of elemental composition.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical framework to control and understand dephasing mechanisms in quantum dots through substrate isolation and composition analysis.

Findings

Pure dephasing dominates when phonons are adiabatically isolated.

Inelastic dephasing occurs with non-adiabatic substrate coupling.

Elemental composition influences the dominant dephasing mechanism.

Abstract

Recent controversy on the quantum dots dephasing mechanisms (between pure and inelastic) is re-examined by isolating the quantum dots from their substrate by using the appropriate limits of the ionization energy theory and the quantum adiabatic theorem. When the phonons in the quantum dots are isolated adiabatically from the phonons in the substrate, the elastic or pure dephasing becomes the dominant mechanism. On the other hand, for the case where the phonons from the substrate are non-adiabatically coupled to the quantum dots, the inelastic dephasing process takes over. This switch-over is due to different elemental composition in quantum dots as compared to its substrate. We also provide unambiguous analyses as to understand why GaAs/AlGaAs quantum dots may only have pure dephasing while InAs/GaAs quantum dots give rise to the inelastic dephasing as the dominant mechanism. Our study accentuates the importance of the elemental composition (of both quantum dots and substrate) in evaluating the dephasing mechanisms of quantum dots.