Coulomb Effect Inhibiting Spontaneous Emission In Charged Quantum Dot

We investigate the emission dynamics of InAs/GaAs quantum dots (QDs) coupled to an InGaAs quantum well in a tunnel injection scheme by means of time-resolved photoluminescence. Under high-power excitation we observe a redshift in the QD emission of the order of 20 meV. The optical transition intensity shows a complex evolution, where an initial plateau phase is followed by an increase in intensity before a single-exponential decay. We attribute this behavior to the Coulomb interactions between the carriers in a charged QD and corroborate the experimental results with both a rate equation model and self-consistent eight-band k.p calculations. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3484143]