The binding energy of light excitons in spherical quantum dots under hydrostatic pressure

Abstract

We study the effects of hydrostatic pressure over the ground state binding energy of light hole excitons confined in $GaAs-Ga_{1-x}Al_{x}As$ spherical quantum dots. We applied the variational method using $1s$-hydrogenic wavefunctions, in the framework of the effective mass approximation. We computed the exciton binding energy as a function of the dot radius, $Al$ concentrations and pressures. Our results show that (i) the hydrostatic pressure increases the binding energy, for all quantum dot radii; (ii) the binding energy is an increasing function of the $Al$ concentration, for fixed radius and pressure, especially for a smaller dot; (iii) the binding energy follows approximately a linear dependence with the pressure, for fixed radius and $Al$ concentration.