Stark effect in colloidal indium arsenide nanocrystal quantum dots: Consequences for wave-function mapping experiments

The influence of the tip-substrate bias-induced electric field in a scanning-tunneling-spectroscopy experiment on colloidal InAs nanocrystals has been studied. Calculating the Stark-induced splitting of the degenerate ${1P}_e$ state perturbatively within a particle-in-a-sphere model, revealed a possible explanation of recently published experimental wave-function mapping data by Millo et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 5751 (2001).