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Impact of the valence band on Rydberg excitons in cuprous oxide quantum wells

Niklas Scheuler1, Jörg Main1,*, Patric Rommel1, Frieder Pfeiffer1, Stefan Scheel2, and Pavel A. Belov2

  • *Contact author: main@itp1.uni-stuttgart.de
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Phys. Rev. B 113, 115413 – Published 12 March, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/1yqx-syzy

Abstract

The complex valence band structure of bulk cuprous oxide necessitates going beyond the parabolic approximation to precisely estimate exciton binding energies. The same is true for excitons in cuprous oxide quantum wells, for which many effects have been obtained so far only qualitatively within a hydrogenlike two-band model. Here, we derive the complete Hamiltonian for excitons in cuprous oxide quantum wells based on the Luttinger-Kohn model, taking into account the full complex valence band structure. Symmetry properties of the system are discussed. Numerical results based on the diagonalization of the Hamiltonian using B-spline functions reveal the energy shifts and the lifting of degeneracies due to the nondiagonal coupling terms of the complex valence band. The relative oscillator strengths of the excitonic transitions induced by circularly polarized light are also calculated.

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Phys. Rev. B 113, 115413– Published 12 March, 2026
  • Received 21 November 2025
  • Revised 5 February 2026
  • Accepted 19 February 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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