Abstract
We show that the anharmonicity driven instability of optical phonons leads in semiconductor quantum dots to a decay of polaron states which otherwise would be everlasting. By such a mechanism a single electron in an excited dot state can relax down to the ground state even if the electron energy difference markedly differs from the optical phonon energy.
- Received 5 May 2000
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.62.R4809
©2000 American Physical Society