Study of the confined states in AlxGa1-xAs/GaAs/vacuum surface quantum well.

In this paper, we investigate the optical properties of confined electronic states in ultra-thin Al0.27Ga0.73As/GaAs/vacuum surface quantum wells by using photoreflectance spectroscopy at room temperature. Well-resolved doublet structures were found in the spectra. The energy of the features increases with decreasing well width in agreement with the predictions of a model of the transition energy between confined electron and hole states in a surface quantum well. Both the transition broadening and intensity behaviors are also well explained by the effective mass approximation theory. The offset between the un-perturbed theoretical transition energy and the experimental data has been explained by surface-state interaction effects. Moreover, the fact that the light hole ground state in the surface quantum well can be pushed out from the surface quantum well has been directly observed experimentally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]