Intraband carrier dynamics in quantum dots and quantum wells

Optical properties of self assembled quantum dots (QDs) have dominant inhomogeneous broadening due to the distribution of size and composition of the QDs in the ensemble. The carrier dynamics in such systems is affected by the neighboring dots due to interdot diffusion of carriers. In this work we investigate the intraband relaxation mechanisms in the QDs. We performed time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) quenching measurements on InAs/GaAs self assembled QDs. The samples were excited by near infrared laser pulses and the time and wavelength resolved PL was measured by a streak camera. During the decay of the PL, a THz pulse from a free electron laser, tuned to the intersublevel transition energy of the QDs, was made incident on the sample. This THz pulse induced quenching of the PL, shown by the dip in Fig.1, by re-exciting carriers to higher levels within the QDs. These carriers eventually relaxed back to the ground state (s-state) resulting in the recovery of the s-state PL intensity. Thus, the recovery of the PL was directly related to carrier relaxation dynamics in the QDs. The mechanisms involved were (i) ISL relaxation, where the excited carriers in the QDs directly fell back into the s-state of the same dot and (ii) transfer to adjacent dots via the wetting layer by multiphoton absorption or tunneling. To distinguish these two effects we performed measurements on two samples grown simultaneously but post-growth annealed at different temperatures resulting in different ISL relaxation times of 60 ps and 1.5 ns. From rate equation model fit of the measured data we found that the recovery time of the quenched PL was independent of the ISL relaxation times. This implied that the carrier relaxation within the dots was dominated by mechanisms other than ISL transition. Comparison of the amount of recovered PL signals for different emission energies showed that there was loss of carriers at higher PL energies, as showed in Fig.1(a), and gain of carriers after recovery for lower emission energies [Fig.1(b)]. This indicates carrier transfer among adjacent QDs. Therefore, even for quite low QD densities (4 x 10^10 cm-2 for our samples), interdot carrier transfer plays an important role in intraband carrier relaxation in self assembled QDs.