Exciton linewidth due to scattering by polar optical phonons in semiconducting cylindrical quantum wire structures

The exciton linewidth has been calculated in semiconducting cylindrical quantum wire structures as a function of the radius of the wire when the electron-hole pair which are bound into the exciton are scattered by polar optical phonons. Because in quantum wells, we found that the dominant contributions to the linewidth come from processes where the exciton is scattered in its ground state with a change in its center of mass motion and where the exciton is ionized into a free electron-hole pair by the polar optical phonons, we only consider such processes here. The linewidth for this scattering mechanism is found to increase as the radius of the wire decreases. Therefore, confinement of the exciton in a quantum wire structure will increase the linewidth of the exciton peaks when the exciton is scattered by polar optical phonons. As in the case of quantum wells for this scattering mechanism, the contribution to the linewidth from the inelastic scattering is larger than the contribution from the elastic scattering.