Informational analysis of the confinement of an electron in an asymmetric double quantum dot

TL;DR

This paper uses Shannon informational entropy to analyze how asymmetry in a double quantum dot affects electron confinement, revealing sensitivity to symmetry changes and oscillatory energy behavior near local extrema.

Contribution

It introduces Shannon entropy as a novel tool to study electronic confinement and asymmetry effects in double quantum dots, highlighting its sensitivity to symmetry regimes.

Findings

Shannon entropy is highly sensitive to symmetry changes in the quantum dot.

Electronic excited state energies exhibit oscillatory behavior as a function of asymmetry.

Entropy analysis reveals irregularities near local energy extrema.

Abstract

A quasi-unidimensional one-electron double quantum dot is studied within the framework of Shannon informational entropy. Its confinement potential, which is described by an asymmetric harmonic-gaussian function, consists of two wells separated by a potential barrier, and the asymmetry of the potential in respect to the center of the barrier is parameterized by $x_0$. In this work we employ Shannon informational entropy as a tool to investigate changes in the electronic confinement resulting from the modifications in the degree of asymmetry $x_0$. In particular, we notice that Shannon entropy turns out to be very sensitive to the change from the symmetric to the antisymmetric regime. Moreover, we show that Shannon entropy as a function of $x_0$ for an electronic excited state displays an irregular behavior whenever the state energy is in the vicinity of a local extreme (a maximum or a minimum); connected with this we observe an oscillatory behavior of the energy of the excited states as a function of $x_0$.