Carrier transport investigation in short-wavelength InAs/AlGaAs quantum dots

Spatially resolved photoluminescence has been used to investigate the details of the carrier capture and recombination dynamics in InAs/AlGaAs self-assembled quantum dots. The spatial PL distribution displays a Gaussian-like profile, whose width depends upon the temperature and detection energy being analyzed. The results give evidence of carrier thermalization between dots with different sizes. The effects of carrier transport in the quantum dot (QD) structure and carrier capture cannot be separated. The results can be modeled by assuming a carrier hopping process.