The trion as an exciton interacting with a carrier

The X⁻ trion is essentially an electron bound to an exciton. However, due to the composite nature of the exciton, there is no way to write an exciton-electron interaction potential. We can overcome this difficulty by using a commutation technique similar to the one we introduced for excitons interacting with excitons, which allows to take exactly into account the close-to-boson character of the excitons. From it, we can obtain the X⁻ trion creation operator in terms of excitons and electrons. We can also derive the X⁻ trion ladder diagram between an exciton and an electron. These are the basic tools for future works on many-body effects involving trions.     

Photoluminescence spectra of nitrogen implanted GaSe crystals

GaSe single crystals were N-implanted along c-axis with ion beams of 10¹⁴ and 10¹⁶ ions/cm² doses having energy values of 60 and 100 keV. The photoluminescence (PL) spectra of undoped and N-implanted GaSe crystals were measured at different temperatures. The PL intensity was observed to decrease with increasing implantation dose while the FWHM of the exciton peaks increased. In heavily doped crystals, due to the interaction with the radiation induced disorders, the wave vector selection rules are satisfied and an indirect exciton PL band is observed 36 meV below the direct exciton states.     

Excitation relaxation and structure of TPPS4 J-aggregates

The energy relaxation kinetics and the structure of the J-aggregates of water-soluble porphyrin 5,10,15,20-tetrasulphonatophenyl porphine (TPPS₄) were investigated in aqueous medium by means of time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy and confocal laser-scanning fluorescence microscopy. The excitation of the J-aggregates, at excitation intensities higher than ∼10¹⁵ photons/cm² per pulse, results in a remarkable decrease of the fluorescence quantum yield and in the appearance of an additional, non-exponential energy relaxation channel with a decay constant that depends on the excitation intensity. This relaxation mechanism was attributed to the exciton single-singlet annihilation. The exciton lifetime in the absence of the annihilation was calculated to be ∼150 ps. Using exciton annihilation theory, the exciton migration within the J-aggregates could be characterized by determining the exciton diffusion constant (1.8±0.9)  10⁻³ cm²/s and the hopping time (1.2±0.6) ps. Using the experimental data, the size of the J-aggregate could be evaluated and was seen to yield at least 20 TPPS₄ molecules per aggregate. It was shown by means of confocal fluorescence laser scanning microscopy that TPPS₄ does self-associate in polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) at acidic pH forming molecular macro-assemblies on a scale of ∼1 μm in PVA matrices.     

Anisotropy of photoconductivity and nonlinear effects in GaSe monocrystals at high optical excitation

In this work, the photoelectric properties of gallium selenide (GaSe) monocrystals in the edge absorption region, with various configurations of current contacts, at low and high optical excitation levels are investigated. The photoconductivity spectrum behavior is determined by localized electronic and excitonic states along c-axis. It is shown that the localization of electronic and excitonic states in one-dimensional fluctuation potential along c-axis results to an anisotropy in photoconductivity spectrum at various current contacts configurations. At E⊥c the photoconductivity is observed in the hν < E_g and hν > E_g regions. In the case of hv < E_g, the maximum photoconductivity, in the impurity and exciton absorption region are observed at 1.975 eV and 2.102 eV, respectively. With rising of excitation energy level, suppression of photoconductivity in the exciton absorption region and increases in impurity absorption region is observed. At E||c contact configuration, the considerable photoconductivity is observed only in the impurity absorption region, which also increases with rising of excitation level. It is supposed that, suppression of photoconductivity in the exciton absorption region at high excitation levels is connected with exciton-exciton interaction, which results to a nonlinear light absorption. The results are compared with the absorption and photoluminescence measurements.     

Exciton formation with interchain couplings in organic polymers

Based on the framework of the tight binding approach and the nonadiabatic dynamics, the formation of an exciton in inter-coupled polymer chains is studied. Both a localized exciton in one single chain and a spread exciton between chains are obtained. It is found that an excited electron-hole pair is more inclined to evolve into a localized exciton, and the long range Coulomb e-e interaction is favorable to the exciton formation. By calculating the formation time of an exciton, we show that the optical response time is faster in a dilute solution than that in a solid film of polymer molecules.     

Excitonic diffusion in thin molecular films

The analyses of exciton diffusion in thin molecular films have shown that the diagonal elements of the diffusion tensor, usually called diffusion coefficients, depend on the layer index labeling layers in the direction of disturbed symmetry. The particular analysis was done for a thin film having four layers. In this structure only two layers are occupied by optical excitations. It means that in the four layer film two films occur in which optical excitations can travel. The subfilm contains a boundary layer that noticeably differs from the subfilm with internal layers. If the subfilm contains the boundary layer, the diffusion coefficient of this layer differs from the diffusion coefficient of any internal layer. If the subfilm contains two internal layers, the diffusion coefficient of these layers are equal, expectably from the viewpoint of physics. The exciton diffusion is very low due to the high exciton energies. This work was supported by the Serbian Ministry of Science and Technology: Grant No 1895.     

Exciton in wurtzite GaN/AlxGa1−xN coupled quantum dots

Based on effective-mass approximation, we present a three-dimensional study of the exciton in GaN/Al_xGa_1−xN vertically coupled quantum dots (QDs) by a variational approach. The strong built-in electric field due to the piezoelectricity and spontaneous polarization is considered. The relationship between exciton states and structural parameters of wurtzite GaN/Al_xGa_1−xN coupled QDs is studied in detail. Our numerical results show that the strong built-in electric field in the GaN/Al_xGa_1−xN strained coupled QDs leads to a marked reduction of the effective band gap of GaN QDs. The exciton binding energy, the QD transition energy and the electron-hole recombination rate are reduced if barrier thickness L^AlGaN is increased. The sizes of QDs have a significant influence on the exciton state and interband optical transitions in coupled QDs.     

Electron-hole diagrams versus exciton diagrams: the simplest problem on interacting excitons

We study the interaction of an exciton with a distant metal, which is the simplest problem on interacting excitons: The semiconductor and metal electrons being “different” species, we do not have to worry about the tricky consequences of Pauli exclusion between identical carriers, which appear in any other problem on interacting excitons. We show how the exciton absorption, in the presence of semiconductor-metal interaction, can be derived in a very simple and transparent way from an exciton diagram procedure, provided that we use the appropriate exciton-metal interaction vertex, which contains the scattering from an exciton state to another exciton state under a Coulomb excitation. We also show that the resolution of this problem using standard electron-hole diagrams is dreadfully complicated at the lowest order in the semiconductor-metal interaction already, preventing a full calculation of the exciton-metal coupling from this usual technique. Received 26 February 2001     

Exciton-exciton interaction in coupled quantum wells

The exciton-exciton interaction is investigated for spatially indirect excitons in coupled quantum wells. The Hartree-Fock and Heitler-London approaches are improved by a full two-exciton calculation including the van der Waals effect. Using these potentials for the singlet and triplet channel, the two-body scattering matrix is calculated and employed to derive a modified relation between exciton density and blue shift. Such a relation is of central importance for gauging exciton densities on the way toward Bose condensation.     

Low-temperature magnetization in nanofilms

The low-temperature magnetization of a film was analyzed by the use of exact Bose representation of spin operators that does not suffer from the presence of unphysical states. The magnetization of thin films has exponentially small temperature correctness, so that Dyson’s proof about exponentially small correction coming from two bosons at ideal lattice point cannot be used in film analyses. The main conclusions of this work are that magnetic lattice of a thin film is more rigid than the macroscopic lattice and that the autoreduction process (the three layer film divides into two layer subfilms) takes place in the film.     

A negatively charged exciton in a quantum disc

The properties of the bound states of the negatively charged exciton X⁻ in a quantum disc with a confined parabolic potential are studied using exact diagonalization techniques. The binding energy spectra of the ground state and the first excited state are calculated as a function of the confinement strength and the effective electron-to-hole mass ratio. The results we have obtained show that the binding energies are closely correlated to the strength of the confinement potential and the effective electron-to-hole mass ratio.     

Stimulated self-trapped exciton emission in CsI:Pb

Defects of the type of V_K and Pb⁺ centres were created in CsI:Pb under the 4.03 eV XeCl laser line irradiation at 10 K. After irradiation, the self-trapped and localized exciton emission excited by the same XeCl laser line was observed as a result of the recombination of electrons, optically released from Pb⁺, with the V_K centres. A strongly superlinear dependence of the emission intensity on the excitation intensity was found for the 3.65 eV emission of the self-trapped exciton. A much weaker superlinearity was observed for the visible localized exciton emission. Optical amplification of the exciton emission was considered as the most probable reason of the observed phenomenon. At 10 K, optical gain G=3.74 was calculated for the self-trapped exciton emission.     

Low-density band-filling in strained InAs quantum wells

We study the low-temperature photoluminescence (PL) of strained InAs single quantum wells (SQWs) embedded in a Ga_0.47In_0.53As matrix grown on InP substrates by modified solid-source molecular beam epitaxy. The spectra are interpreted in the frame of a two-level rate equation model describing the carrier dynamics in the structures. We show that band-filling occurs in these QWs for an excitation power as low as 30 Wcm^–2. Moreover, the spectra reveal that the band-filling results from the rapid population of the hole subband. This observation highlights the low in-plane heavy-hole mass in the compressively strained film. Our results therefore demonstrate the high potential of InAs/Ga_0.47In_0.53As QW nonlinear optical devices operating in the mid-IR wavelength range.     

Change of exciton-phonon interaction in layered ferroelastic crystals (Cs3Bi2I9)

The half-width of exciton absorption band (n=1) of Cs₃Bi₂I₉ layered ferroelastic crystals was studied carefully as function of temperature in the range from 5 to 300 K. For the first time, we have found a new physical effect: change of exciton-phonon interaction (from weak to strong) in the same sample as temperature increases. It was established that the temperature value T^*=150 K may be considered as characteristic one, below which a crystal loses the nature of layered substance. The effect is explained using a model that takes into account the reconstruction of the crystal lattice from non-layered to layered one.     

Microphotoluminescence study of local temperature fluctuations in n-type (Cd,Mn)Te quantum well

Microphotoluminescence mapping measurements were performed in a magnetic field on a (Cd,Mn)Te quantum well, modulation n-doped with iodine at about 10¹⁰ cm⁻². Photoluminescence spectra contain neutral (X⁰) and negatively charged (X⁻) exciton lines. The Zeeman effect shows a significant role of heating of the Mn system even under lowest excitation densities. The effective temperature of the magnetic system exhibits strong fluctuations anticorrelated with the total intensity of PL signal. An interpretation of these fluctuations in terms of the influence of non-radiative recombination centers is proposed (in two alternative versions). Maps of the local X⁰/X⁻ intensity ratio indicate a minor role of electrostatic potential fluctuations.     

Exact polarizability of low-dimensional excitons

Wannier excitons polarized by a static electric field and confined to low-dimensional structures are studied. Effective non-integer dimensions are included by considering hydrogenic states in α-dimensional space, with α as a parameter. Exact expressions for lowest order energy and wave function corrections are obtained as a function of α. For the 1s state, we demonstrate that the exciton polarizability decreases with reduced dimensionality and eventually vanishes as (α−1)⁴ as the 1D limit is approached. The low-dimensional 2s and 2p polarizabilities are also decreased but remain finite in the 1D limit.     

Ab initio study of the Fe intra- and inter-layer magnetic order in Fe/Ir(001) superlattices

We reconsider the semiconductor trions from scratch. We first determine the very many “reasonable” ways to write the trions in first quantization. We then select the forms which are easy to relate to physical pictures. In a second part, we derive the corresponding creation operators in second quantization. We pay particular attention to the expression of the X^- trion in terms of exciton and free-electron, as it is the one adapted to future works on many-body effects with trions. Received 27 May 2002 / Received in final form 18 December 2002 Published online 20 June 2003 RID="a" ID="a"e-mail: combescot@gps.jussieu.fr     

Ground state energy of the electron-hole liquid in type-II (GaAs)m/(AlAs)m quantum wells

The ground state energy of quasi-two-dimensional electron-hole liquid (EHL) at zero temperature is calculated for type-II (GaAs)_m/(AlAs)_m (5≤m≤10) quantum wells (QWs). The correlation effects of Coulomb interaction are taken into account by a random phase approximation of Hubbard. Our EHL ground state energy per electron-hole pair is lower than the exciton energy calculated recently for superlattices, so we expected that EHL is more stable state than excitons at high excitation density. It is also demonstrated that the equilibrium density of EHL in type-II GaAs/AlAs QWs is of one order of magnitude larger than that in type-I GaAs/AlAs QWs.     

A study of an exciton in a quantum dot with Woods–Saxon potential

A theoretical study of an exciton confined in a quantum dot with the Woods–Saxon potential is presented. The great advantage of our methodology is that it enables confinement regimes by varying two parameters in the model potential. Calculations are made by using the method of the numerical diagonalization of the Hamiltonian matrix within the effective-mass approximation. The binding energies of the ground (L=0$L=0$) and first excited (L=1$L=1$) states are obtained as functions of the dot radius. Based on the computed energies and wave functions, the linear, the third-order nonlinear and the total optical absorption coefficients have been examined between the ground and the first excited states. The results are presented as a function of the incident photon energy for the different values of the dot radius and the barrier slope. It is found that the binding energy and the optical properties of the excitons in a quantum dot are strongly affected by the dot radius and the barrier slope of the confinement potential.     

The influence of different doping elements on microstructure, piezoelectric coefficient and resistivity of sputtered ZnO film

ZnO film is attractive for high frequency surface acoustic wave device application when it is coupled with diamond. In order to get good performance and reduce insertion loss of the device, it demands the ZnO film possessing high electrical resistivity and piezoelectric coefficient d₃₃. Doping ZnO film with some elements may be a desirable method. In this paper, the ZnO films undoped and doped with Cu, Ni, Co and Fe, respectively (doping concentration is 2.0 at.%) are prepared by magnetron sputtering. The effect of different dopants on the microstructure, piezoelectric coefficient d₃₃, and electrical resistivity of the film are investigated. The results indicate that Cu dopant can enhance the c-axis orientation and piezoelectric coefficient d₃₃, the Cu and Ni dopant can increase electrical resistivity of the ZnO film up to 10⁹ Ω cm. It is promising to fabricate the ZnO films doped with Cu for SAW device applications.