Excitons in semiconductor nanostructures with disorder

Abstract

Excitons in quantum structures with alloy as well as interface disorder are treated. The optical properties follow from a solution of the Schrodinger equation describing the exciton center-of-mass motion. The absorption linewidth is always smaller than the underlying potential variation (motional narrowing). Using a kinetic approach with acoustic phonon scattering, luminescence lineshapes are calculated showing non-equilibrium exciton distributions. Spatially resolved spectroscopy allows to extract information on individual exciton eigenstates.