Excitons in quantum disks and disk arrays

We present a theory which describes the influcence of the Coulomb attraction on the optical spectra for quantum dots within the envelope function formalism. Starting from a generalized non-local Elliott formula absorption and luminescence spectra are traced back to two-particle wave functions and energies. They are solutions of the corresponding Schrödinger equation for interacting electron-hole pairs in confinement potentials determined by the spatial variation of the band edges of the considered microstructure. A complete numerical analysis of the two-particle problem for flat quantum dots, i. e. disks for which the size quantization in z-direction is much stronger than that in the xy-plane is presented