Anisotropy in the electronic states of self-assembled quantum dots

Full text: Self-assembled quantum dots (QD) are semiconductor nanostructures that have been widely reported for use in technological devices such as optical memories and detectors. Besides this commercial potential, their zero-dimensional characteristics unveil a vast realm of fundamental physics to be explored in condensed matter physics. An example is the tailorable InAsP QD system, which allows one to control emission energy and QD sizes, among other properties. In this work we use polarized optical techniques in order to determine the origin of some structures previously identified via photoluminescence (PL) and photomodulated transmission (PT). We show that by varying the linear polarization of either excitation beam (PL) or probe beam (PT) it was possible to identify both QD and wetting layer (WL) contributions for the optical spectra of InAsP QDs. PT shows clearly that lower energy spectral structures present an anisotropy as a function of the polarization direction, which can be associated to QD recombination, since some degree of spatial anisotropy is expected for these nanostructures. WL contributions, however, appears at higher energies and shows isotropic behavior as a function of linear polarization, a characteristics of a two-dimensional layer. Polarized PL measurements seem to confirm the above identification, however a slightly dependence on WL intensity as a function of excitation polarization was found; it might be related to the diffraction grating polarization response of our spectrometer, and this is under investigation at the moment. Higher states for both WL and QD, although faint in the spectra, are present for samples with deeper confining potentials. (author)