Self-consistent Hartree method for calculations of exciton binding energy in quantum wells

A new computationally efficient and flexible approach to calculating characteristics of excitons in quantum wells based on a self-consistent variational treatment of the electron–hole Coulomb interaction is developed. It is applied to several different quantum well materials and is shown to give much better (lower) values of exciton energies. The iterative scheme used to calculate the energies and respective wave functions is stable and rapidly convergent. The authors believe that the method can be an important computational tool in computing exciton characteristics in shallow quantum wells exceeding currently existing approaches in accuracy and efficiency. The method can also be naturally generalized for quantum wires and dots.