Tunneling escape time of electrons from a quantum well under the influence of an electric field

Abstract

We have performed time-resolved photoluminescence on GaAs/Al xGa1-xAs single quantum well structures with an electric field applied perpendicular to the well plane. The quantum wells are coupled to the GaAs continuum through a thin barrier; the escape time of the electrons in the well was measured by time-resolved photoluminescence. The dependence of the decay time on applied bias was found to agree very well with a simple semiclassical model.