Optical properties of spherical quantum dot with position-dependent effective mass

• We investigate the quantum states of quantum dot with position dependent mass.
• The effect of position-dependent mass appears in the effective potential.
• Optical properties of spherical quantum dot are calculated.

In this paper, the effects of position-dependent effective mass on the optical properties of a three dimensional quantum dot are numerically investigated. For this purpose, by using the point canonical transformation method and numerical solution of the Schrödinger equation, the energy levels and wave functions of electrons in the confinement potential are obtained. Then the optical properties are studied by considering the compact density matrix approach based on the numerical calculation of the wave function. Our calculations were compared with the case of constant mass. Results show that the position-dependent effective mass plays an important role in the intersubband optical absorption coefficient and refractive index changes in a quantum dot.