Semiconductor nanocrystals in a magnetic field

The influence of a magnetic field on the electron and hole energy spectra of spherical uniform and multilayer semiconductor nanocrystals is investigated. The calculations are performed within the $\mathbf{k}\cdot \mathbf{p}$ method and envelope function approximation. The valence subband mixing is taken into account by considering a two-band Hamiltonian for the hole states. It is shown that the magnetic-field dependence of the energy spectrum varies strongly with the size and composition of the nanocrystals. Several interesting phenomena, like spatial polar separation of the one-electron charge density in quantum dot–quantum well structures or crossover from confinement in the external shell to the internal core in quantum dot–quantum barrier systems under the influence of a magnetic field are reported.