Bimodal optical characteristics of lateral InGaAs quantum dot molecules

Lateral InGaAs quantum dot molecules (QDMs) formed by thin-cap-and-regrowth molecular beam epitaxial technique comprise large, central quantum dots (cQDs) and small, satellite quantum dots (sQDs) in close proximity. Temperature-dependent photoluminescent (PL) measurements show that the bimodal size distribution gives rise to bimodal optical characteristics: the cQDs ground-state (GS) emissions vary slowly with temperature while the full-width at half maximum (FWHM) remains almost constant; the sQDs GS emissions, on the other hand, exhibit a sigmoidal temperature shift while the FWHM shows an anomalous temperature behaviour. The bimodal optical characteristics are well described in the existing framework of spatially localised excitons in QDs and inter- and intramolecular carrier redistributions in each and among the QDMs via non-resonant multi-phonon assisted mechanisms.