Interplay between periodicity and nonlinearity of indirect excitons in coupled quantum wells

Abstract

Inspired by a recent experiment of localization-delocalization transition (LDT) of indirect excitons in lateral electrostatic lattices [M. Remeika \textit{et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{102}, 186803 (2009)], we investigate the interplay between periodic potential and nonlinear interactions of indirect excitons in coupled quantum wells. It is shown that the model involving both attractive two-body and repulsive three-body interactions can lead to a natural account for the LDT of excitons across the lattice when reducing lattice amplitude or increasing particle density. In addition, the observations that the smooth component of the photoluminescent energy increases with increasing exciton density and exciton interaction energy is close to the lattice amplitude at the transition are also qualitatively explained. Our model provides an alternative way for understanding the underlying physics of the exciton dynamics in lattice potential wells.