Influence of built-in electric field on forbidden transitions in InxGa1-xAs/GaAs double quantum well by three-beam photoreflectance

Photoreflectance spectroscopy has been used to study optical transitions in In0.045Ga0.955As/GaAs double quantum well at 80 K. The derivative nature o f this contactless electromodulation technique allows for the observation o f excited state transitions in the low-dimensional structure including the symmetry-forbidden ones. Excitonic symmetry-forbidden transitions can be ob served due to the effect of mixing of heavy and light hole excitons and/or due to some asymmetry in the structure. We have shown that the built-in ele ctric field in the region of double quantum well is weak enough (less than 0.5 kV/cm) not to cause any significant energetic shift of features due to quantum confined Stark effect, on one hand. On the other hand, it is suffic ient to change strongly the oscillator strength of forbidden transitions. T o change the internal electric field, we have used photoreflectance in the three-beam mode with a third beam continuously illuminating the sample and causing changes of the built-in electric fields due to the photovoltage eff ect. This method works as a contactless forward bias and allows for a chang e of the field down to the flat band conditions. We have shown that changes of built-in electric field by amount of a few tenths of kV/cm can modify t he intensity of forbidden transitions significantly. We show that, although the mixing of excitons is still important, a very weak built-in electric f ield can be dominant in the observation of forbidden excitonic transitions in double quantum well.