Acoustic phonon sidebands in the emission line of single InAs/GaAs quantum dots -: art. no. 233301

We present an experimental and theoretical study of the existence of acoustic phonon sidebands in the emission line of single self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots. Temperature-dependent photoluminescence measurements reveal a deviation from a Lorentzian profile with the appearance of lateral sidebands. We obtain an excellent agreement with calculations done in the framework of the Huang-Rhys formalism. We conclude that the only relevant parameter for the observation of acoustic phonon sidebands is the linewidth of the central zero-phonon line. At high temperature, the quasi-Lorentzian quantum dot line appears to be fully determined by the acoustic phonon sidebands.