Intersubband optical absorption between multi energy levels of electrons in InGaN/GaN spherical core-shell quantum dots

The intersubband optical absorption between multi energy levels of electrons in InxGa1-xN/GaN spherical core-shell quantum dots (CSQDs) and ternary mixed crystal and size effects have been investigated by using the principle of density matrix. Electronic eigenstates under the effect of built-in electric field (BEF) have been calculated by a finite element method. The results show that optical absorption between intersubbands with main quantum numbers n = 1 and n = 2 are as important as that between ones with n = 1 and different angular quantum numbers when the BEF is taken into account. In consideration of BEF, the saturation of total optical absorption coefficients (ACs) and secondary peaks of refractive index changes (RICs) appear when incident light intensity I surpasses a certain value. For a given I, the maximum ACs and zero RICs positions in InxGa1-xN/GaN CSQDs with a fixed shell size have a blue-shift when x increases or the core InxGa1-xN radius R1 decreases from 5 nm. However, when R1 > 5 nm, ACs and RICs tend to be stable. The results indicate that effective adjustment of ACs and RICs in CSQDs with BEFs by size is in a limited scale range. The saturation of ACs or secondary peaks of RICs appear more likely in CSQDs with smaller x or larger R1. These results are expected to be helpful both in the further theoretical and experimental study on optic devices consisting of CSQDs.