Birefringence in quantum wells of heterostructures In0.68Al0.1Ga0.13As/In0.42Al0.22Ga0.24As/InP

Optical activity of quantum wells

“…While metamaterials convert light polarization due to a special design of building blocks, semiconductor nanostructures are birefringent as-grown. The polarization conversion has been demonstrated in a number of experiments on quantum wells (QWs) [7][8][9][10][11] and quantum dots [12,13]. The low symmetry of QWs can be caused by in-plane deformations [8][9][10] or by microscopic structure of interfaces [14,15], while the birefringence of self-assembled quantum dots appears due to their anisotropic shape [13].…”