Coulomb matrix elements for the impact ionization process in nanocrystals: An envelope function approach

We propose a method for calculating Coulomb matrix elements between exciton and biexciton states in semiconductor nanocrystals based on the envelope function formalism. We show that such a calculation requires proper treatment of the Bloch parts of the carrier wave functions, which, in the leading order, leads to spin selection rules identical to those holding for optical interband transitions. Compared to the usual (intraband) Coulomb couplings, the resulting matrix elements are additionally scaled by the ratio of the lattice constant to the nanocrystal radius. We present also statistical estimates of the distribution of the coupling magnitudes and energies of the coupled states. The number of biexciton states coupled to exciton states from a certain energy range shows a power-law scaling with the ratio of the coupling magnitude to the energy separation. We estimate also the degree of exciton-biexciton mixing. The amount of biexciton admixture to exciton states at least 1 eV above the multiple exciton generation threshold can reach 80% but varies strongly with the nanocrystal size. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.87.075309