Informational analysis of the confinement of an electron in an asymmetric double quantum dot

Abstract

A quasi-unidimensional one-electron double quantum dot is studied within the framework of Shannon informational entropy. Its confinement potential, which is described by an asymmetric harmonic-gaussian function, consists of two wells separated by a potential barrier, and the asymmetry of the potential in respect to the center of the barrier is parameterized by $x_0$. In this work we employ Shannon informational entropy as a tool to investigate changes in the electronic confinement resulting from the modifications in the degree of asymmetry $x_0$. In particular, we notice that Shannon entropy turns out to be very sensitive to the change from the symmetric to the antisymmetric regime. Moreover, we show that Shannon entropy as a function of $x_0$ for an electronic excited state displays an irregular behavior whenever the state energy is in the vicinity of a local extreme (a maximum or a minimum); connected with this we observe an oscillatory behavior of the energy of the excited states as a function of $x_0$.