Magnetic field effect on the binding energy of a hydrogenic impurity in coaxial GaAs/ AlxGa1−xAs quantum well wires

We propose a coaxial cylindrical quantum well wire (QWW) system, in which two conducting cylindrical layers are separated by an insulating layer. The ground state binding energy of a hydrogenic impurity subjected to uniform magnetic field applied parallel to the wire axis is studied within a variational scheme as a function of the inner barrier thickness for two different impurity positions and various barrier potentials. The ground state energy and wave function in the presence of a magnetic field is directly calculated using the fourth-order Runge–Kutta method. It is found that the binding energy in critical barrier thickness shows a sharp increase or decrease depending on the impurity position and magnetic field strength. The main result is that a sharp variation in the binding energy, which may be important in device applications, depends strongly not only on the location of the impurity but also on the magnetic field and the geometry of the wire.