Bound polarons in semiconductor nanostructures

Bound polarons are discrete, confined electronic states, spatially localized due to a local potential V(r) but sharing a common phonon state of the surrounding crystal. We study the energy states of polarons bound in a potential and determine the local optical absorption spectrum up to first-order time-dependent perturbation theory with respect to the electron-photon interaction. The model is applied to describe the optical properties of submonolayer CdSe insertions epitaxially grown between ZnSe layers. As a typical signature of bound polarons we found excited-state energies equidistantly separated by the LO phonon energy and with optical transition probabilities determined by the anisotropies in V(r).