Electric field and shape effect on the linear and nonlinear optical properties of ellipsoidal finite-potential quantum dots

•Prolate shape red shifts the peak positions of ACs and RICs and weakens the ACs.•Oblate shape blue shifts the peak positions ACs and RICs and enhances the ACs.•Electric field red shifts the peak positions of ACs and RICs.•The influence of nonlinear ACs is more pronounced for the oblate shape.

In this work, the optical properties of ellipsoidal finite-potential quantum dot with an on-center shallow hydrogenic impurity in the presence of an external electric field have been studied. A variational procedure in the framework of perturbation theory was employed within the effective-mass approximation. Numerical results on typical GaAs/AlxGa1−xAs materials show that, besides incident light intensity, the electric field and dot shape have an important influence on the peak positions and magnitudes of linear and third-order nonlinear absorption coefficients and refractive index changes.