Real-space Hamiltonian method for low-dimensional semiconductor heterostructures

Abstract

We present a new method for calculating electronic states in low-dimensional semiconductor heterostructures, which is based on the real-space Hamiltonian in the envelope function approximation. The numerical implementation of the method is extremely simple; all subband energy levels and envelope functions are directly obtained by a single evaluation of the heterostructure Hamiltonian matrix. We test the method in the 6- and 8-band k \cdot p models as well as in a simple parabolic one-band model and demonstrate its great accuracy. The method can be straightforwardly generalized to a general n-band k \cdot p model. We describe three different approaches within the method which make it possible to investigate the origin and removal of the spurious or unphysical solutions, which has long been an important issue in the community.