Band structure and optical anisotropy in V-shaped and T-shaped semiconductor quantum wires

TL;DR

This paper provides a detailed theoretical analysis of the electronic and optical properties of V- and T-shaped semiconductor quantum wires, highlighting valence band mixing, spin splitting, and optical anisotropy.

Contribution

It introduces an accurate approach to include valence band mixing and realistic geometries in quantum wire analysis, revealing unique band structure features and optical anisotropy insights.

Findings

Significant valence band peculiarities, including large spin splitting in T-shaped wires.

Good agreement between calculated and experimental optical spectra.

Optical anisotropy analysis as a tool to probe valence states.

Abstract

We present a theoretical investigation of the electronic and optical properties of V- and T-shaped quantum wires. Valence band mixing as well as realistic sample geometries are fully included through an accurate and efficient approach that is described here in detail. We investigate the resulting valence band structure, which shows some significant peculiarities, such as an anomalously large spin splitting in the lowest heavy hole subband of T-shaped wires. For both classes of wires we obtain good agreement between calculated optical absorption and recent experimental spectra, and we demonstrate that the analysis of optical anisotropy can be used as an effective tool to extract information on valence states, usually very difficult to obtain otherwise.