BAND-STRUCTURE AND OPTICAL ANISOTROPY IN V-SHAPED AND T-SHAPED SEMICONDUCTOR QUANTUM WIRES

We present a theoretical investigation of the electronic and optical p roperties of V- and T-shaped quantum wires. Valence-band mixing as wel l as realistic sample geometries are fully included through an accurat e and efficient approach that is described here in detail. We investig ate the resulting valence-band structure, which shows some significant peculiarities, such as an anomalously large spin splitting in the low est heavy-hole subband of T-shaped wires. For both classes of wires we obtain good agreement between calculated optical absorption and recen t experimental spectra, and we demonstrate that the analysis of optica l anisotropy can be used as an effective tool to extract information o n valence states, which is usually very difficult to obtain otherwise.