ABSTRACT
The reduced symmetry of the quantum confinement direction which is inherent to quantum wells grown on (110) oriented substrates results in in-plane polarization anisotropy of the optical transitions. We present a study of this anisotropy using photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy of (110) and (100) oriented quantum well structures. The spectral features observed in the photoluminescence-excitation spectra of these structures are modeled using an eight band k·p-type effective mass theory. We directly determine the valence band anisotropy of the quantum well material from the orientational dependence of the transition energies and oscillator strengths. We found (γ3 − γ2)/(γ3 + γ2) = 0.18±0.03, where γ2,3 are the GaAs Luttinger parameters.
