K. F. Karlsson

Wavelength and loss splitting in directly coupled photonic-crystal defect microcavities

Coupling between photonic-crystal defect microcavities is observed to result in a splitting not only of the mode wavelength but also of the modal loss. It is discussed that the characteristics of the loss splitting may have an important impact on the optical energy transfer between the coupled resonators. The loss splitting--given by the imaginary part of the coupling strength--is found to arise from the difference in diffractive out-of-plane radiation losses of the symmetric and the antisymmetric modes of the coupled system. An approach to control the splitting via coupling barrier engineering is presented.

Optical polarization anisotropy and hole states in pyramidal quantum dots

The authors present a polarization-resolved photoluminescence study of single semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) interconnected to quantum wires, measured both in a top geometry, and in a less conventional cleaved-edge geometry. Strong polarization anisotropy is revealed for all observed transitions, and it is deduced that closely spaced QD hole states exhibit nearly pure heavy-or light-hole character. These effects are attributed to the large aspect ratio of the dot shape.

Temperature influence on optical charging of self-assembled InAs'GaAs semiconductor quantum dots

It is demonstrated that the photoluminescence spectra of single self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots are very sensitive to excitation energy and crystal temperature. This is qualitatively explained in terms of the effective diffusivity of photogenerated particles, which affects the capture probability of the quantum dot. As a consequence, this opens the possibility of controlling the average number of excess electrons in the quantum dot by optical means. This technique may be used as a simple tool to create and study charged exciton complexes without any specially fabricated samples.

Photonic-crystal microcavity laser with site-controlled quantum-wire active medium

Site-controlled quantum-wire photonic-crystal microcavity laser is experimentally demonstrated using optical pumping. The single-mode lasing and threshold are established based on the transient laser response, linewidth narrowing, and the details of the non-linear power input-output characteristics. Average-power threshold as low as approximately 240 nW (absorbed power) and spontaneous emission coupling coefficient beta approximately 0.3 are derived.

Size dependent biexciton binding energies in GaN quantum dots

Single GaN/Al(Ga)N quantum dots (QDs) have been investigated by means of microphotoluminescence. Emission spectra related to excitons and biexcitons have been identified by excitation power dependence and polarization resolved spectroscopy. All investigated dots exhibit a strong degree of linear polarization (similar to 90%). The biexciton binding energy scales with the dot size. However, both positive and negative binding energies are found for the studied QDs. These results imply that careful size control of III-Nitride QDs would enable the emission of correlated photons with identical frequencies from the cascade recombination of the biexciton, with potential applications in the area of quantum information processing.

InGaN quantum dot formation mechanism on hexagonal GaN/InGaN/GaN pyramids

Growing InGaN quantum dots (QDs) at the apex of hexagonal GaN pyramids is an elegant approach to achieve a deterministic positioning of QDs. Despite similar synthesis procedures by metal organic chemical vapor deposition, the optical properties of the QDs reported in the literature vary drastically. The QDs tend to exhibit either narrow or broad emission lines in the micro-photoluminescence spectra. By coupled microstructural and optical investigations, the QDs giving rise to narrow emission lines were concluded to nucleate in association with a (0001) facet at the apex of the GaN pyramid.

Low temperature near band edge recombination dynamics in ZnO nanorods

The recombination dynamics of neutral donor bound excitons (DoX: I4, I6/6a) and near band edge defect-related emission in solution grown ZnO nanorods are investigated using steady state and time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) measurements. The effects of annealing are also studied. Low temperature steady state PL shows a systematic removal of the I4 line after annealing at 450 °C and the subsequent domination of I6a in these PL spectra. Additionally, the time decay of the I4, I6/6a, free exciton (FX), and basal plane stacking fault-related (BSF) PL transitions are studied as a function of annealing temperature. For the various annealing temperatures studied, the PL decay is described by a bi-exponential profile with a fast component (contribution from the surface) and slow component (related to bulk recombination). The fast component dominates in the case of as-grown and low temperature annealed samples (anneal temperatures up to 300 °C), suggesting the presence of surface adsorbed impurities. For sample...

Excited excitonic states observed in semiconductor quantum dots using polarization resolved optical spectroscopy

We present results on the polarization-resolved photoluminescence emitted from InGaAs/AlGaAs single quantum dots (QDs) grown in inverted tetrahedral pyramids. The emitted light was detected for two mutually perpendicular linear polarization directions in the less conventional cleaved-edge geometry, in addition to the standard top-emission geometry. Whereas the in-plane linear polarization was isotropic, as a consequence of the high symmetry of the system, we found a strong polarization anisotropy of the edge-emitted light revealing QD states of predominantly heavy- or light-hole character. By temperature control of the charge state, several neutral and charged light-hole like exciton complexes were identified. In particular, a biexciton showing a twofold radiative recombination path, leading to two nearly perpendicularly polarized emission multiplets, was identified. These results are also of technological relevance for any design of optoelectronic QD-integrated devices.

On the polarized emission from exciton complexes in GaN quantum dots

The optical linear polarization properties of exciton complexes in asymmetric Stranski-Krastanov grown GaN quantum dots have been investigated experimentally and theoretically. It is demonstrated that the polarization angle and the polarization degree can be conveniently employed to associate emission lines in the recorded photoluminescence spectra to a specific dot. The experimental results are in agreement with configuration interaction computations, which predict similar polarization degrees for the exciton and the biexciton (within 10%) in typical GaN quantum dots. The theory further predicts that the polarization degree can provide information about the charge state of the dot.

Formation of the charged exciton complexes in self-assembled InAs single quantum dots

We have studied the low-temperature photoluminescence (PL) of the self-assembled InAs single quantum dots (QDs) using conventional micro-PL setup to detect PL from an individual QD. It is demonstrated, that at certain experimental conditions, what concerns the laser excitation energy, the laser power and the crystal temperature, several additional lines, redshifted relative to the ground state transition, appear in the PL spectra. These are interpreted in terms of charged exciton complexes which form due to the population of quantum dots with a nonequal amount of electrons and holes. The latter phenomenon is determined by the excess energies of photogenerated carriers and is proposed as an effective optical method to create and study charged exciton complexes in QDs.