Excitonic photoluminescence in symmetric coupled double quantum wells subject to an external electric field

The effect of an external electric field F on the excitonic photoluminescence (PL) spectra of a symmetric-coupled double quantum well (DQW) is investigated both theoretically and experimentally. We show that the variational method in a two-particle electron-hole wave-function approximation gives a good agreement with measurements of PL on a narrow DQW in a wide interval of F including flat-band regime. The experimental data are presented for a molecular-beam-epitaxy-grown DQW consisting of two 5-nm-wide GaAs wells, separated by a 4-monolayers (ML's)-wide pure AlAs central barrier, and sandwiched between Ga0.7Al0.3As layers. The bias voltage is applied along the growth direction. Spatially direct and indirect excitonic transitions are identified, and the radius of the exciton and squeezing of the exciton in the growth direction are evaluated variationally. The excitonic binding energies, recombination energies, oscillator strengths, and relative intensities of the transitions as functions of the applied field are calculated. Our analysis demonstrates that this simple model is applicable in the case of narrow DQW's, not just for a qualitative description of the PL peak positions but also for the estimation of their individual shapes and intensities. [S0163-1829(99)01532-5].