Effect of hydrostatic pressure on the hole effective mass in a strained InGaAs/GaAs quantum well

A systematic analysis of the hydrostatic pressure effects on the effective masses of holes in strained single InxGa1-xAs/GaAs quantum-well (Qw) is performed. The strain effect on the shift of the subband energies and the effective masses is also investigated. A 14-band k.p Hamiltonian matrix is used in the calculations and solved by iteration with the Bir-Pikus Hamiltonian. Numerical results have been presented over a pressure range from 0 to 16 kbar. Our results show that especially for the calculation of the light-hole mass, it is necessary to use the 14-band and not the 8-band k.p model. This is supported by the fact that the 8-band k.p model predicts an increasing mass with pressure which does not reproduce the experimental results. Finally our calculations clearly confirm the available experimental results given in the literature. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.