Influence of Coulomb correlations on the quantum well intersubband absorption at low temperatures

Thi Uyen-Khanh Dang, Carsten Weber, Marten Richter, Andreas Knorr

Published 2010-05-18, updated 2010-07-12Version 2

We present a theory for the intersubband absorption including electronic ground state correlations in a doped GaAs/Al_{35}Ga_{65}As quantum well system. Focusing on the influence of the Coulomb interaction among the carriers at low temperatures, we find that the ground state correlations lead to an increased renormalization and spectral broadening of the absorption spectrum. At T = 1 K, its full width at half maximum is increased by up to a factor 3. The inclusion of electron-phonon scattering strongly reduces the relative impact of the electronic correlations.