Radiative lifetimes of dipolar excitons in double quantum-wells

Abstract

Spatially indirect excitons in semiconducting double quantum wells have been shown to exhibit rich collective many-body behavior that result from the nature of the extended dipole-dipole interactions between particles. For many spectroscopic studies of the emission from a system of such indirect excitons, it is crucial to separate the single particle properties of the excitons from the many-body effects arising from their mutual interactions. In particular, knowledge of the relation between the emission energy of indirect excitons and their radiative lifetime could be highly beneficial for control, manipulation, and analysis of such systems. Here we study a simple analytic approximate relation between the radiative lifetime of indirect excitons and their emission energy. We show, both numerically and experimentally, the validity and the limits of this approximate relation. This relation between the emission energy and the lifetime of indirect excitons can be used to tune and determine their lifetime and their resulting dynamics without the need of directly measuring it, and as a tool for design of indirect exciton based devices.