Intersubband optical absorption in InSb stepped quantum wells. Effect of spin sublevels crossing

Abstract

We study linear and non-linear coefficients of the intersubband absorption in InSb-based stepped quantum wells subjected to an in-plane magnetic field. We consider also a transverse electric field to achieve near resonance conditions. Taking into account the two deepest conduction levels and their corresponding Zeeman spin splitting sublevels, we calculate dispersion relations by means of an improved version of Kane model. Besides the known anti-crossing between down and up spin split sublevels, we obtain an extra spin level crossing for some determined parameters. This crossing clearly modifies the absorption spectrum for transitions among the four sublevels considered. We study a low electron density case, when only the first deepest sublevel is occupied, and a high density case with only the highest sublevel empty. We find a similar behavior of the absorption spectrum in both cases.