We have studied corrugated quantum wells as a semiconductor quantum wire structure. The quantum well corrugation results from a step bunching effect during epitaxial growth on vicinal ͑111͒ GaAs substrates and might be used to form a quantum wire superlattice. The strain and piezoelectric effects were studied both by an atomistic valence force field method and by an elastic continuum model. Within the elastic continuum model we also studied the electromechanical coupling. The electronic band structure was calculated with the eightband k·p model. The nonphysical oscillating solutions were eliminated by appropriate fine tuning of the material parameters. We have also studied the density of states and the polarization dependence of interband light absorption in the electric dipole approximation.
We have studied the influence of conduction band-valence band coupling on the polarization of gain in quantum well ͑QW͒ lasers. As a reference we used the eight-band k • p description of the gain polarization. Our eight-band k • p model accounts for the crystal orientation, lack of inversion symmetry, strain induced deformation potentials, and piezoelectricity. We have studied both strained and unstrained ͑001͒ and ͑111͒ QWs. The results are compared with the transition dipole model of the gain polarization ͓M. Asada et al., IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 20, 745 ͑1984͔͒, which is based on a phenomenological generalization of Kane's ͓J. Phys. Chem. Solids 1, 249 ͑1957͔͒ linear k • p model of bulk crystals. We found a quantitative difference between our multiband model and the transition dipole model of Asada et al. The difference is addressed to lack of orthogonality between the transition dipole and the electron wave vectors. The orthogonality is broken outside the ⌫ point by both the QW heterostructure geometry and the interband coupling. Results obtained by the complete eight-band model are also compared with restricted multiband models excluding the conduction band.
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