Morphology of wetting-layer states in a simple quantum-dot wetting-layer model

Abstract

The excitation of semiconductor quantum dots often involves an attached wetting layer with delocalized single-particle energy eigenstates. These wetting-layer states are usually approximated by (orthogonalized) plane waves. We show that this approach is too crude. Even for a simple model based on the effective-mass approximation and containing one or a few lens-shaped quantum dots in a rectangular wetting layer, the wetting-layer states typically show a substantially irregular and complex morphology. To quantify this complexity we use concepts from the field of quantum chaos such as spectral analysis of energy levels, amplitude distributions, and localization of energy eigenstates.