Anisotropic optical properties of excitons in strain-controlled InAs quantum dots

We report the optical anisotropy of excitons in self-assembled InAs quantum dots (QDs), the strain of which is controlled by tuning the lattice constant of the spacer layers between stacked QD layers. The strain dependence of the energy structure for excitons is investigated using the four-wave mixing technique. The fine-structure beat and the exciton-biexciton beat in four-wave mixing measurements clearly show that the fine-structure splitting of exciton states increases with increasing strain in the growth plane. The strain also causes significant optical anisotropy, which is observed by the angular-dependent measurements of the collinear polarization of excitation pulses. The strain dependence of the optical anisotropy is accurately reproduced by a model calculation in which the valence band mixing between heavy- and light-hole bands is taken into account. We demonstrate that the optical properties of excitons in QD ensembles are successfully controlled by tuning the lattice constant of the spacer layers.