PHYSICAL REVIEW B 85, 125311 (2012)

Inuence of electronic coupling on the radiative lifetime in the (In,Ga)As/GaAs quantum dotquantum well system
M. Syperek,1,* J. Andrzejewski,1 W. Rudno-Rudzi nski,1 G. S ek,1 J. Misiewicz,1 E. M. Pavelescu,2, C. Gilfert,2 and J. P. Reithmaier2
2

Institute of Physics, Wrocaw University of Technology, Wybrze ze Wyspia nskiego 27, 50-370 Wrocaw, Poland Institute of Nanostructure Technologies and Analytics, Technische Physik, Universitaet Kassel, Heinrich-Plett-Strasse 40, 34132 Kassel, Germany (Received 16 November 2011; revised manuscript received 12 March 2012; published 22 March 2012) In this paper, we present time-resolved photoluminescence of self-assembled (In,Ga)As quantum dots (QDs) coupled to an Inx Ga1x As quantum well (QW) through a thin GaAs barrier. The coupling strength is controlled by the well width and material composition and has a direct inuence on the QDQW system ground-state radiative lifetime, which increases from 1.1 up to 1.82 ns as the coupling strength increases. A thorough explanation is given for the reduction of the fundamental transition oscillator strength in the interacting system induced by the transformation of related eigenstates from a noncoupled to a coupled regime. The experimental observations have been fully conrmed by the results of three-dimensional band structure calculations of a coupled QDQW system within the framework of eight-band kp theory. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.85.125311 I. INTRODUCTION PACS number(s): 78.66.Fd, 78.67.De, 68.65.Hb, 78.47.D

Recent rapid advancement in the fabrication techniques of semiconductor quantum dot (QD) structures has been followed by a remarkable amount of research devoted to the exploration of their unique optical properties. A number of spectroscopic results on a single semiconductor QD have been obtained, which conrmed its quasiatomic character being a consequence of the three-dimensional (3D) carrier connement.1,2 However, the QD is very rarely a standalone object. Its coupling to the environment is of primary importance for current application and future technological implementations, including quantum data processing based on spin or charge state.3,4 A QD can interact with other dots, defect states, surface states, etc., which in turn leads to the modication of its intrinsic physical properties. In the following, we consider the coupling of a quasi-0D QD ground state to quantum well (QW) 2D extended states. The concept of a coupled QDQW system has been proposed for the realization of the tunnel injection of carriers from their large reservoir (QW) to QDs. It has been successfully implemented for single-electron transistors,5,6 tunnel injection lasers,79 and QD-based memories.10 Surprisingly, some basic physical phenomena in such coupled systems remain unexplored or at least their nature is unclear. A few interesting questions are still open related to the full band structure picture, the intraband and interband carrier scattering processes, charge- and spin-transfer mechanisms between the QW and QD in either coherent or incoherent regimes, and the carrier dynamics on the ground state of an entire QDQW system in the presence of an electronic coupling. The issue of a coherent charge transfer between resonantly coupled high-energy states of the QW and QD has been very recently addressed.11 In this work, we elucidate the role of a coupling regime between the QD and QW and its strength on the coupled-system ground-state carrier dynamics beyond the coherent regime of interaction. In this respect, we have performed continuous-wave (CW) photoluminescence (PL) and photoreectance (PR)
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experiments, which let us identify the dipole-allowed groundstate and excited-state interband transitions in a set of (In,Ga)As/GaAs coupled QDQW structures. The variable indium content in the well and the well-width changes allowed us to control the coupling strength between the QD and QW, dened as the inuence of the well potential on the states conned in QDs. For the sake of comparison, a reference (In,Ga)As/GaAs QD structure has also been considered. Information concerning a possible coupling regime is acquired based on the data analysis of a time-resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) experiment, additionally supported by a 3D band structure calculation of the entire system within the eight-band kp approach.
II. EXPERIMENTAL DETAILS

The investigated structures, called CS1, CS2, CS3, and QDref, were grown by molecular-beam epitaxy on a semiinsulating (001) GaAs substrate.12 The CS1 consists of a 15-nm-wide In0.2 Ga0.8 As QW separated by a 2-nm-thick GaAs barrier from In0.6 Ga0.4 As QDs obtained by depositing nominally 1.8 monolayers of the (In,Ga)As material. The well and dots are surrounded by two 15-nm-thick layers of GaAs, and, nally, the entire QDQW system is sandwiched between AlGaAs/GaAs superlattices. The CS2 and CS3 have a similar layer structure and differ from the CS1 in the well width, which is 7 nm for both, and in the In composition in the well, which is nominally 23% and 27%. These parameters are summarized in Table I. Additionally, the (In,Ga)As QDs reference structure (QDref) has been produced under the same growth conditions without the QW. The surface density of dots in each structure is estimated to be on the order of 1010 cm2 . The layer sequence of samples is schematically depicted in Fig. 1. For the CW PL and TRPL experiments, samples were held in a variable-temperature cryostat. In the case of the CW experiment, the photoexcitation was provided by the 532 nm line from the yttrium aluminum garnet laser. For the TRPL experiment, the sample was excited by a mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser, which generates pulses with
2012 American Physical Society

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a duration of 140 fs at a repetition rate of 76 MHz. In the case of the TRPL experiment, the PL signal was dispersed by a 0.3-m-focal-length monochromator and detected by a streak camera system equipped with the S1 photocathode. The overall time resolution was on the level of 20 ps. The CW PL emission was measured using the same setup with the InGaAs CCD linear array detector. The PR experiment has been performed at room temperature on a separate setup described in Ref. 13 (low-temperature PR has not been used due to strong PL background). In order to compare the low-temperature CW PL spectra with those obtained in the PR experiment, the latter were shifted according to the temperature-induced band-gap shift.
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS FIG. 2. (Color online) High-excitation, low-temperature CW photoluminescence (red line) and room-temperature photoreectance spectra (black line, shifted to higher energy according to the band-gap temperature change) of a reference QD structure (QDref, top panel) and coupled quantum dotquantum well systems (CS1CS3, bottom panels).

The high-excitation CW PL and PR spectra for investigated structures are shown in Fig. 2. The QDref PL spectrum reveals two emission bands centered at 1.25 and 1.31 eV. They are

FIG. 1. (Color online) The layer sequence of the coupled-system (CS) structure (top), together with a simple sketch of the valence band (VB) and conduction band (CB) energy proles of the region of interest (bottom). The QW ground state (GS) and QD GS denote optical transitions between states primarily localized in the QW and QD, respectively.

attributed, respectively, to the ground-state and excited-state transitions in the ensemble of dots. In the case of coupled systems (CS1CS3), the interpretation of PL spectra is not so evident. However, the lowest PL emission band centered at 1.22 eV can be assigned to the dipole-allowed ground-state transition of the entire QDcoupledQW system. To identify the origin of the higher-energy optical transitions, we performed the PR experiment. The PR spectra presented in Fig. 2 for the coupled structures reveal a weak feature at 1.22 eV, which corresponds well to the ground-state QD transition observed in the emission spectrum. At the higher-energy side, there appears a considerably more intensive PR resonance, which changes its position from 1.348 eV for the CS1 structure, to 1.315 eV for CS2, down to 1.278 eV for CS3. This optical transition involves conned states in the coupled system, which have acquired a signicant amplitude of the eigenfunction on the QW side (see sketch in Fig. 1, bottom). The transition matrix elements between states primarily localized in the QW (QW-like states) will exceed those of the QD-like or mixed-type character, which are indirect in the real space. Consequently, this should lead to the experimentally observed increase in the PR resonance intensity contributed by a large oscillator strength of such an optical transition. The spectral redshift of the QW-like transition in the coupled system is strongly related to the In content in the well and its width. These two parameters dene the QW potential depth and thus can control the coupling regime of the coupled-system fundamental state. One would expect that if the QW-like transition is energetically closer to the ground-state transition of the entire system, then the coupling strength increases. Such a tentative hypothesis holds for the structures under study,

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FIG. 3. (Color online) Schematic picture of the square of wave function moduli in the x -y plane (top panels) and in the cross section along the z (growth) axis (bottom panels) for three coupling regimes.

as we will prove later. The energy distance E between the QW-like and the ground-state transition is equal to 128, 95, and 48 meV, respectively, for the CS1, CS2, and CS3 structures, as illustrated in Fig. 2. The three possible coupling regimes are schematically depicted in Fig. 3. The noncoupled regime is characterized by the carrier probability density | (r)|2 restricted essentially to the QD area, while in the weakly coupled QDQW system, the probability density slightly leaks out from the QD conning potential toward the QW. Finally, in the strongly coupled system, the carrier | (r)|2 is smeared over both the QD and QW conning potentials. Let us turn to the QDref and CS structures ground-state emission dynamics. The electron-hole recombination process can be described within the scattering theory, which is usually summarized in Fermis golden rule, which connects the electron-hole pair radiative decay time ( ) and the transition oscillator strength (fosc ) in the following expression: 1 fosc , while fosc | e,h (r) |2 . It leads to the conclusion that measuring the radiative decay time maps out the spatial overlap between the electron and hole wave functions and thus gives insight into the coupling regime of the investigated system. Figure 4(a) presents TRPL traces taken at the maximum of the ground-state emission band for (In,Ga)As/GaAs QDs (QDref) and (In,Ga)As/GaAs coupled QDQW structures (CS1CS3) with different In content in the QW, and thus different E . The structures were excited nonresonantly with photons of 1.6 eV energy and the average pump power density of P = 0.42 W cm2 . These excitation conditions correspond to less than a single electron-hole pair generated per dot. Note that the CW PL measurements presented above were performed at a much higher excitation density than in the TRPL experiment in order to obtain the emission from the excited states of the system. Each of the experimental TRPL traces can be described by a single exponential decay process: I (t ) = A e(t/P L ) , where A is the preexponential factor and P L is the emission decay time constant. The tting function is given as a straight line in Fig. 4(a) in a semilogarithmic scale. Since the experiment was performed at low temperature (T = 4.5 K) and in weak excitation conditions below the level corresponding to a single electron-hole pair created per dot, we believe that the obtained P L is not considerably modied by nonradiative recombination processes and/or multicharging effects. Thus, P L is very close to the intrinsic electron-hole radiative recombination time; see, e.g., Refs. 1416. However,

FIG. 4. (Color online) (a) Low-temperature TRPL traces (open circles) taken at maximum of PL intensity for (In,Ga)As/GaAs QDs (QDref) and (In,Ga)As/GaAs QDQW coupled systems (CS1 CS3). The solid line indicates the t to the experimental data. (b) Experimental (full circles) and theoretical (open circles) PL decay time constants vs detuning energy ( E ). Error bars are for the theoretical values based on the uncertainty of the value of the refractive index (5%). Dashed line indicates the PL decay time constant for the reference QD structure. Dotted line is a guide to the eye. Laser photon energy is 1.6 eV, Ppump = 0.42 W cm2 .

recent papers by the group of P. Lodahl17,18 claim that the nonradiative component to the measured decay time of QD emission cannot be neglected, thus the radiative decay time is, in fact, probably longer than the measured one (the difference being on the order of 1020%, according to Ref. 18). Even if this is true also for the structures investigated here (which is not evident, since the PL decays we registered are monoexponential, contrary to the ones in Refs. 17 and 18), the potential changes in the nonradiative processes, which decrease the total decay time, explain neither the direction of the changes in the lifetimes measured for coupled systems nor their magnitudes. The P L vs E in the coupled system is plotted in Fig. 4(b). The QDref ground-state recombination time is shown by a dashed line at the level of P L = 1.1 ns resulting from the intrinsic properties of a set of similar QD emitters of a given size, shape, and chemical content. If we assume that an inplane coupling between QDs is negligible, these QDs can be treated as a good example of a quantum system being in the noncoupled regime. The P L is dened in this case by the spatial coherence of an electron-hole pair conned in the QD.19,20 A very similar PL decay time of 1.1 ns has been obtained for the CS1, where the QD structure was modied by introducing the 15-nm-wide (In,Ga)As QW with 17% of indium, and separated from the QD layer by a thin 2-nm-wide GaAs barrier. An almost identical decay time constant for the CS1 and QD structures suggests that the emitter has the same or very similar parameters in both cases. It brings us to the conclusion that the ground-state emission in the CS1 system originates from the radiative recombination of electron-hole pairs localized primarily in the quasi-0D potential of the dot. Moreover, the dot itself remains in the noncoupled regime, where the CS1 ground state is not signicantly perturbed by the presence of the QW [see Fig. 3(a)]. A considerable increase in the PL lifetime is observed for the CS2 and CS3 structures compared to the QDref one. In

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same reason, the QD size will be affected only very slightly and hence the coherence volume can also be assumed to be constant. Considering the interdot coupling, for the dot surface density of 1010 cm2 , the average distance between two adjacent dots in the layer exceeds 70 nm, which makes the direct electronic coupling between them negligible.
IV. NUMERICAL CALCULATIONS

FIG. 5. Excitation-power dependence of low-temperature PL decay times.

order to explain the increase in P L for CS2 and CS3, we exclude a number of effects which could have an impact on the elongation of the decay time constant, and conclude that it can only be affected by the increasing electronic coupling strength in these structures, leading to the reduction of the electron-hole wave-function overlap. We discard the following alternative explanations: (1) the ground-state lling effect similar to the one observed in QDs; (2) modication of the QD surface density, leading to the inplane coupling between them, thus increasing the probability of charge-transfer processes or smearing the carrier probability density function between adjacent dots; (3) change of the dot size and/or shape, thus affecting the coherence volume. The ground-state lling effect is commonly observed at high optical pumping regimes. In order to investigate this possibility, we have measured the excitation-power dependence of PL decay times for all samples. Figure 5 shows the determined PL lifetimes for the QDref and CS1CS3 structures as a function of excitation-power density. The P L , for the QDref and CS1, does not exhibit signicant changes over the three decades of the average excitation-power densities. On the other hand, for CS2 and CS3, an increase in the excitation density from 0.42 to 30 Wcm2 causes a noticeable increase in P L from 1.33 up to 1.7 ns, and from 1.82 up to 3.5 ns, respectively. This can be explained by the state lling due to the constant relling of the ground state from the upper lying states of the system. However, for both structures, there is a range of excitation-power densities where the lifetimes are almost constant and still the relation between the respective P L is conserved, meaning that the state lling effect alone does not explain the observed behavior. The QD ground-state radiative decay time can be modied by the electronic coupling within the QD layer, which is essentially controlled by the QD surface density or by changes in the QD size. However, the growth process parameters for the QDref and CS structures were the same. Although some change in the QD size parameters could occur due to the fact that the dots in the CS structures are grown on top of the QW, we do not expect a considerable increase in the QD surface density because the modication of strain is negligible, as shown by our calculations and structural data. For the

The TRPL experiment cannot identify whether the electronic coupling is related to the conduction- or valence-band states simply due to the fact that we probe the temporal evolution of the product of photogenerated electron and hole distribution functions. To shine some light on this issue, we have performed three-dimensional band structure calculations of reference QD and coupled QDQW systems. We have developed a 3D eight-band kp model, whose implementation includes strain elds,21 piezoelectric effects, and spin-orbit interaction.22,23 For simplicity, we neglected the Coulomb correlation between electron-hole pairs (excitons). We believe that even without taking into account excitons in our model, we can still well explain the observed experimental results in a qualitative way. However, we discuss later the possible inuence of the Coulomb correlation between the electron and hole on the radiative lifetimes. Potential approaches to the modeling of the exciton are given in Ref. 24. All physical equations were numerically solved using the nite-difference method.22,23 The calculation of the ground-state energy level in the QD and CS structures is performed in a similar approach to Ref. 25, with some modications. One is the introduction of the effect of nonlinear piezoelectricity (which, however, does not have a considerable inuence on the current system due to the small sizes of investigated QDs).22,26 Another, more important modication is the proper inclusion of the boundary conditions that would correctly take into account the existence of a QW-like substructure separated from the QD. Typically, in order to calculate QW energy states, the 1D picture is usedwith the connement potential along the z direction and a geometric translational symmetry used for other directions, with free particlelike picture solutions. On the other hand, in the standard QD-like structures, imposing the Dirichlet boundary condition is sufcient. However, in our case, we have to be able to calculate the energy levels in a QW in the same 3D picture as for the QDs. Therefore, we impose in our model the periodic boundary conditions so that we can calculate the QW states in the 3D model, which agree very well with the states calculated in the 1D model, even with the strain-related effect switched on. The material parameters connected with the piezoelectric effect are taken from Ref. 26. Other necessary material parameters are from Ref. 27 without any changes. As a test of the model, we have determined the energylevel structure of the standalone QD. Based on the structural data, we assumed a pyramidal QD with a base length of 16 nm, truncated at 1.7 nm and sitting on a wetting layer, which is 3 ML thick for this In content.28 The In0.5 Ga0.5 As QD is immersed in the GaAs matrix. Lattice constants and energyband gaps are taken at T = 4.2 K. The calculated QD groundstate energy is 1.25 eV, whereas the excited-state energy is 1.31 eV. It remains in a very good quantitative agreement with

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FIG. 6. (Color online) Projection of the 3D probability density function for electron and hole ground state onto the x -y-z plane calculated for the QD (top panels) and coupled QDQW system (bottom panels) with 7-nm-wide QW and In content of 27% in the well.

FIG. 7. (Color online) (a) The probability of nding a hole (circles) or an electron (squares) on the QD side of the barrier as a function of indium content in the QW, for two QW widths. (b) Analogical dependence for calculated radiative lifetimes. Dotted lines are a guide to the eye.

the PL spectrum in Fig. 2. In this respect, such a QD can be treated as a good representative of the real QD family probed in the experiment. Once the QD band structure was established, we performed further numerical calculations of the coupled QDQW system. For the sake of the discussion given above, we were mostly interested in fundamental energy levels and respective eigenfunctions for conduction and valence bands. We consistently kept the same QD parameters, but changed the indium content of the Inx Ga1x As QW. In order to obtain a good agreement between the numerical and experimental values of the energies of the ground-state transitions, we tuned the [In] of the CS1 sample to 17%. In the next step, we performed calculations for QW compositions around the nominal values for the two QW widths of d = 7 and 15 nm to determine the dependence of PL lifetimes on QW parameters. Figure 6 shows an example of the ground-state electron and hole probability density ||e,h (r) |2 in the modeled standalone QD and for coupled systems. It is clearly visible that in the former case both the electron and hole are tightly localized within the QD conning potential. However, if we only introduce a QW with sufciently high In content beside the QD, then the electron wave-function density previously localized in the dot pours out and feels the 2D conning potential of the well. Note that the hole still remains strongly conned within the QD, showing no difference with respect to the standalone QD case. To provide more details, we have calculated the fraction of a probability density function for the electron and hole within the QD spatial area. We have plotted it in Fig. 7 as a function of the In content in the Inx Ga1x As QW and the QW width. First of all, the hole wave function is always strongly limited to the QD area independently of the considered In content in the well and the well width [see open and closed circles in Fig. 7(a)]. Moreover, it is exactly the same as for the standalone QD. It brings us to the conclusion that there is no electronic coupling between the lowest-lying hole states

conned in the system with the QW. It becomes considerably different in the case of electrons. The square of the electron wave-function modulus even for the standalone QD is only partially localized within the QD area, while the rest leaks out to the environment. It does not change for the QDQW system as far as the In content is low and is weakly dependent on the well width. However, when the In content increases, the lowest-lying electron state in the structure with QW is transformed from noncoupled rst to weakly and next-tostrongly coupled regimes. The electron probability density is then distributed over the QW and QD conning potential. For a relatively high percentage of indium in the (In,Ga)As QW, the lowest-lying electron wave function is almost fully out of the QD. We can now translate the observed effects into the radiative decay time of an electron-hole pair in the coupled system being in its ground state. The oscillator strength fosc is given by the equation fosc = 2 | e |e p| h |2 , m0 Ee Eh (1)

FIG. 8. (Color online) The calculated coupled QDQW system band structure.

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where e , h are the 3D electron and hole single-particle envelope functions with the energy Ee and Eh for electron and hole, respectively, e is the polarization unit vector of the electromagnetic eld, and p is the electron momentum. The momentum matrix element calculation also takes into account the strain,29 and because of time-reversal symmetry degeneration, incoherent averaging30 is used. The QD radiative lifetime is inversely proportional to the oscillator strength fosc as described by the following equation:31 = 6 0 m0 c3 1 , 2 ne2 0 fosc (2)

is the optical transition frequency, n where 0 = (Ee Eh )/h is the refractive index, m0 is the free electron mass, e is the electron charge, and 0 is the vacuum permittivity. Figure 7(b) illustrates calculated electron-hole radiative lifetimes of the CS ground state vs the In content in the QW. The point at In = 0% corresponds to the calculated lifetime for the standalone QD, which is 1.0 ns. It ts quite well the measured PL lifetime of 1.1 ns. As expected, for the low [In], the ground state remains in the noncoupled regime where the radiative lifetime is governed by the coherence volume occupied by the electron-hole pair. However, when [In] exceeds a certain value, the radiative lifetime increases rapidly. It is driven by the reduction of the electron-hole wave-function overlap, which decreases the transition oscillator strength. In this case, the system is already transformed to the coupled regime. Qualitatively, the same tendency as in Fig. 7(b) is observed for measured PL lifetimes presented in Fig. 4(b), with experimental lifetimes shorter than the calculated ones. This discrepancy can be related to the lack of Coulomb interactions in the model. The effect of Coulomb correlation on oscillator strength depends on the connement degree of carriers in each of the QDQW coupled systems. Whereas holes are strongly conned to QDs for all of the samples, the electron wave function is localized in the QD for the reference and CS1 samples only, and spills out progressively more to the QW layer for samples CS2 and CS3. Since the dots under study can be considered small (the excitons Bohr radius exceeds the dot dimensions), both types of carriers in the reference and CS1 samples are in the strong connement regime, where quantum connement effects overwhelm the Coulomb interactions and excitonic effects can be neglected.3234 The situation becomes different for samples CS2 and CS3, where a considerable part of the electron wave function is in the QW layer, i.e., separated in the real space from the hole wave functions, meaning that the connement has been weakened. In this case, the Coulomb attraction might be more important; electrons are pulled toward the positions closer to QDs, increasing the oscillator strength and thus decreasing the lifetimes. The theoretically predicted radiative lifetimes presented in Fig. 4(b) are expected to be in better agreement with the measured ones if the Coulomb correlation is included. Another reason for the divergence between experimental and calculated lifetimes for the samples with electron wave functions delocalized from QDs may be the increasing nonradiative component to the measured values, resulting from the electron scattering on the GaAs barrier/interface states, providing nonradiative recombination channels.

The experimental results presented above, supported by theoretical consideration, can be of immediate relevance to the device performance, where the coupled QDQW system plays a crucial role. Here we will particularly refer to tunnel injection (TI) lasers.79,12 Despite the fact that the results presented above on the carrier dynamics and electronic structure in InGaAs/GaAs TI structures concern low-temperature data, the conclusions can be at least extrapolated to room temperature, i.e., normal conditions of the laser device operation. The energy-level structure and hence the spatial distribution of the probability densities for both types of carriers will not change signicantly at room temperature. For the structure CS3, the measured energy difference (48 meV) between the lowest electron and hole energy levels of the conned carrier states in both parts of the system, i.e., in the QD-like and the injector QW-like lowest levels, seems to not be very well matched with the characteristic energies of the LO phonon (35 meV) in GaAs. However, the related energy separation between the respective QW-like and QD-like transitions is not shared equally between the conduction and valence bands. Our calculations show that the ratio is about 1:3 in favor of the valence band (mainly due to the larger effective mass of the holes and hence a much deeper connement of the lowest hole state within the QD potential; see Fig. 8), which gives around 36 meV for the holes. Moreover, with increasing temperature, the carriers become distributed over the states of the QW subband in the injector, and hence the energy difference between the hot carriers in the injector and the lowest state in the dot can approach the LO phonon energy also for electrons. This means that an efcient carrier transfer mediated by an LO phonon can take place in structures like the CS3. This is actually conrmed in the experimental data of TI devices (Ref. 12), where a very similar active region has been used, and where improvements in the laser performance have been observed.

VI. CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, we have investigated the role of coupling strength on the ground-state carrier dynamics in selfassembled (In,Ga)As quantum dots coupled to an Inx Ga1x As quantum well through a 2-nm-wide GaAs barrier. The coupling strength is controlled through the variations of the In content in the well and the well width, and is directly monitored by measuring the fundamental state PL lifetime of the systems with the QW and the reference QD structure. The PL decay time constant of 1.1 ns obtained for reference QDs and CS1 conrms that the latter system with In content of 17% remains in the noncoupled regime in which the electron and hole wave functions are not affected by the QW conning potential. Increasing the In content leads to the elongation of the PL lifetime of several hundreds of ps. This effect is directly connected with the transformation of the related fundamental eigenstates from a noncoupled to a coupled regime, which was fully conrmed by the 3D band structure calculations of the coupled systems. Moreover, the numerical calculations suggest that in the structures with high indium content, an increase in the coupling strength is related to the delocalization of the electron wave function from 0D to 2D

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conning potential of the well, whereas holes remain strongly localized in the QD.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work has been supported by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education within Grant No.

N N515 518338 and by the DeLight Project No. 224366, 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission. The fellowship support for M.S. is co-nanced by the European Union within the European Social Fund. Part of this work has been realized within the NLTK infrastructure, Project No. POIG.02.02.00-00-003/08-00.

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