Lifetime analysis of quasibound states in coupled quantum wells

Abstract

A simple time-dependent model is presented to investigate lifetimes of the quasibound states in coupled quantum wells (CQWs). The transfer matrix approach is employed to discretize the conduction-band profile of the heterostructure and form a dispersion equation whose zeros correspond to the complex eigenenergies. Both the bound and quasibound states are extracted numerically in the complex plane by Newton's method. The lower and higher well subbands are found to have negative and positive energy shift, respectively, as following the no level crossing theorem. Besides, the decay rate of the quasibound state is approximately proportional to the absolute energy shift. The quasibound states, which have larger energy shift, have shorter lifetime and decay more quickly. Furthermore, the differences in lifetime between the quasibound states in CQWs can be easily realized as all the wave functions are specially adjusted to form the relative probability density distributions. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.