Capture and thermal re-emission of carriers in long-wavelength InGaAs/GaAs quantum dots

We investigate the ultrafast carrier dynamics in metalorganic chemical vapor deposition-grown InGaAs/GaAs quantum dots emitting at 1.3 mum. Time-resolved photoluminescence upconversion measurements show that the carriers photoexcited in the barriers relax to the quantum-dot ground state within a few picoseconds. At low temperatures and high carrier densities, the relaxation dynamics is dominated by carrier-carrier scattering. In contrast, at room temperature, the dominant relaxation process for electrons is scattering between quantum-dot levels via multiple longitudinal optical (LO)-phonon emission. The reverse process, i.e., multiple LO-phonon absorption, governs the thermal re-emission of electrons from the quantum-dot ground state. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.