Stark shifts on exciton luminescence in quantum wells: Effect of Coulomb interaction

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Abstract
When an electric field is applied perpendicularly to a quantum well, the exciton luminescence or absorption peak position exhibits a shift analogous to the atomic Stark effects. At a finite applied field, the total perpendicular electric field acting on each of the carriers (electrons or holes) should be the sum of the applied field and the component of the electron-hole Coulomb interaction in that direction. We propose a simple generalization of the variational calculation by D. A. B. Mil- ler et al. [Phys. Rev. B 32, 1043 (1985)] so the effect of Coulomb interaction on the exciton spectra is described more appropriately. This becomes important particularly in those heterostructures where either the conduction- or valence-band offset is small. Numerical results are presented for comparison with II-VI semiconductor heterostructures studied in recent experiments.