High spatial resolution spectroscopy of a single V-shaped quantum wire

We report on microscopic photoluminescence of a single V-shaped AlGaAs/GaAs quantum wire. The experiments are performed at low temperature by selectively exciting 1 μm of the sample. The main photoluminescence line is split into sharp peaks of width less than 0.5 meV and separated by a few meV. The energy position and the intensity of the peaks are characteristic of the scanned quantum wire. First microphotoluminescence results suggest that localization phenomena are predominant in the quantum wire. They are due to the formation of extended monolayer-step islands, larger than the exciton radius, as in the case of high-quality quantum wells. © 1997 American Institute of Physics.