The longitudinal-optical (LO)-phonon coupling is experimentally examined by the optical decay of various charged and neutral exciton species in single quantum dots, and the related Huang-Rhys parameters are extracted. A positive trion exhibits significantly weaker LO-phonon replicas in the photoluminescence spectrum than the neutral and negatively charged species. Model computations show that the strength of the replicas is determined by the Coulomb interactions between electrons and holes, which modify the localization of the envelope wave functions and the net charge distribution.

• Received 1 October 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.82.205421