Intrinsic optical anisotropy of quantum wells in cubic crystals

The intrinsic optical anisotropy of flat quantum wells (FQW's) grown from cubic materials is investigated on the basis of an envelope-function approximation. It is shown that optical polarization effects in $(11N)$-oriented QW's are caused by the warping of the hole energy spectrum, and that they are the more pronounced the stronger the anisotropy of hole effective masses is. An analytic dependence of the optical matrix elements on the thickness of the QW's is found. Qualitative estimates of the intrinsic optical anisotropy for (100)-oriented QW's in GaAs and AlAs are given.