Bose-Einstein statistics in photoluminescence of quantum well excitons

The dynamics of resonant photoluminescence (PL) of quantum well (QW) excito ns is studied within the thermodynamic description of the LA-phonon-assiste d relaxation kinetics acid taking into account Bose-Einstein statistics of excitons. Nonclassical statistics strongly influences the effective radiati ve lifetime tau(opt) of quasi-equilibrium QW excitons. For a strongly degen erate gas of excitons, the law tau(opt) proportional to T (T is the effecti ve temperature of excitons) changes and tau(opt) approaches 2 tau(R), where tau(R) is the intrinsic radiative lifetime of QW excitons. Furthermore, we show how the influence of nonclassical statistics on tau(opt) can be trace d even at high T. Our approach describes self-consistently both the rise of FL, due to thermalization, and the decay of FL, due to the radiative recom bination of thermalized QW excitons. Finally, we model numerically the PL k inetics of statistically degenerate indirect excitons in coupled GaAs/AlGaA s quantum wells. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.