Effect of hydrostatic pressure on the hole effective mass in a strained InGaAs/GaAs quantum well

•The effects of hydrostatic pressure on light-hole mass are investigated.•It is necessary to use 14-band and not 8-band k.p Hamiltonian matrix.•The advantage of the 14-band k.p has been observed.

A systematic analysis of the hydrostatic pressure effects on the effective masses of holes in strained single InxGa1−xAs/GaAs quantum-well (Qw) is performed. The strain effect on the shift of the subband energies and the effective masses is also investigated. A 14-band k.p Hamiltonian matrix is used in the calculations and solved by iteration with the Bir–Pikus Hamiltonian. Numerical results have been presented over a pressure range from 0 to 16 kbar. Our results show that especially for the calculation of the light-hole mass, it is necessary to use the 14-band and not the 8-band k.p model. This is supported by the fact that the 8-band k.p model predicts an increasing mass with pressure which does not reproduce the experimental results. Finally our calculations clearly confirm the available experimental results given in the literature.