Magnetic field induced indirect gap in a modulation doped quantum well

Abstract We report the first experimental evidence for the indirect fundamental band-gap developed when an in-plane magnetic field is applied to a wide, modulation-doped quantum well. In such structures, band bending may cause the lowest energy electron and hole states to be spatially separated, which leads to an induced indirect gap proportional to the field. The corresponding photoluminescence peak undergoes a large, roughly quadratic shift with field, a consequence of the behaviour of the allowed transitions involving thermalised holes and electrons with finite k . This characteristic strong diamagnetic shift is observed in spectra from both asymmetric AlGaAs/InGaAs/GaAs strained layer structures and a very wide symmetric InGaAs/InP lattice matched well. The experimental results are shown to be in good agreement with realistic self consistent calculations of the band-structure.