Many-body effects in strongly-disordered III-nitride quantum wells: interplay between carrier localization and Coulomb interaction

Abstract

The joint impact of Anderson localization and many-body interaction is observed in the optical properties of strongly-disordered III-nitride quantum wells, a system where the Coulomb interaction and the fluctuating potential are pronounced effects with similar magnitude. A numerical method is introduced to solve the 6-dimensional coupled Schrodinger equation in the presence of disorder and Coulomb interaction, a challenging numerical task. It accurately reproduces the measured absorption and luminescence dynamics of InGaN quantum wells at room-temperature: absorption spectra reveal the existence of a broadened excitonic peak, and carrier lifetime measurements show that luminescence departs from a conventional bimolecular behavior. These results reveal that luminescence is governed by the interplay between localization and Coulomb interaction, and provide practical insight in the physics of modern light-emitting diodes.