Determination of valence-band effective-mass anisotropy in GaAs quantum wells by optical spectroscopy

Abstract

We present the first high-resolution excitation spectra of (Al,Ga)As multiple-quantum-well structures grown on substrates with different orientations [(001), $\mathrm{}\left(111\right)B$, and (310) planes]. The features in these spectra can be consistently assigned by a single set of effective masses in a sophisticated eight-bank $\mathbf{k}·\mathbf{p}$ calculation. In this way, we obtain very directly the anisotropy of the valence bands in GaAs. We obtain masses of $0.34m_0$ and $0.094m_0$ for the heavy hole and the light hole in the [001] direction and $0.7m_0$ for the heavy hole in the [111] direction.