Excitons and charged excitons in semiconductor quantum wells

A variational calculation of the ground-state energy of neutral excitons and of positively and negatively charged excitons (trions) confined in a single-quantum well is presented. We study the dependence of the correlation energy and of the binding energy on the well width and on the hole mass. The conditional probability distribution for positively and negatively charged excitons is obtained, providing information on the correlation and the charge distribution in the system. A comparison is made with available experimental data on trion binding energies in GaAs-, ZnSe-, and CdTe-based quantum well structures, which indicates that trions become localized with decreasing quantum well width. (c) 2000 The American Physical Society.