INTERFACE OPTICAL ANISOTROPY IN A HETEROSTRUCTURE WITH DIFFERENT CATIONS AND ANIONS

A theory of optical anisotropy and quantum-confined Pockels effect in CA/C'A'(001)quantum-well structures with different cations and anions, i.e. for C not equal C' and A not equal A', has been developed. The t heory is based on a generalized effective-mass method, in which the bo undary conditions for the envelope functions were constructed taking i nto account the mixing of heavy- and light-hole states under normal in cidence of the hole on the interface. It is shown that an absorption a nisotropy in interband transitions occurs for different mixing coeffic ients t(l-h) in the boundary conditions for the right- hand (A-C') and left-hand (A'-C) interfaces. An analysis is made of the interface con tribution to the anisotropy induced by an external electric field for coinciding and different band offsets at the interfaces. The microscop ic sp(3)s tight-binding model is used to estimate the difference betw een the t(l-h) (A-C') and t(l-h) (A'-C) coefficients. (C) 1998 America n Institute of Physics. [S1063-7834(98)03310-3].