Optical transitions involving excitons in quantum wires.

We present a comprehensive discussion of the excitonic properties of V-shaped GaAs and InGaAs quantum wires grown on patterned substrates. Systematic linear and non-linear spectroscopic studies have been performed in order to clarify the impact of lateral confinement on the exciton wave function, namely: enhanced exciton binding energy, localization in magnetic field, recombination from excited states and multiphoton absorption. The careful evaluation of the electron confinement energies, based on the actual quantum wire profile obtained by TEM micrographs, including the internal piezoelectric field induced by off-diagonal terms of strain tensor, reproduces quite well the measured one-dimensional states. Finally, application of quantum wires in a p-i-n wave guide for bistable operation is demonstrated.