Tuning of the valence band structure of GaAs quantum wells by uniaxial stress.

Uniaxial stress induces striking effects on the polarized emission from the 2D Fermi sea in modulation doped GaAs quantum well structures. These are interpreted within the effective mass theory in terms of changes in valence band mixing caused by modifications to the subband spacing and departure from tetragonal symmetry. Calculation of the electron-hole recombination together with a phenomenological approximation for the Fermi sea shake-up processes successfully accounts for the luminescence spectra and their stress dependence.