The radiative recombination rates of interacting electron-hole pairs in a quantum dot are strongly affected by quantum correlations among electrons and holes in the dot. Recent measurements of the biexciton recombination rate in single self-assembled quantum dots have found values spanning from two times the single exciton recombination rate to values well below the exciton decay rate. In this paper, a Feynman path-integral formulation is developed to calculate recombination rates including thermal and many-body effects. Using real-space Monte Carlo integration, the path-integral expressions for realistic three-dimensional models of $\mathrm{In}\mathrm{Ga}\mathrm{As}∕\mathrm{Ga}\mathrm{As}$, $\mathrm{Cd}\mathrm{Se}∕\mathrm{Zn}\mathrm{Se}$, and $\mathrm{In}\mathrm{P}∕\mathrm{In}\mathrm{Ga}\mathrm{P}$ dots are evaluated, including anisotropic effective masses. Depending on size, radiative rates of typical dots lie in the regime between strong and intermediate confinement. The results compare favorably to recent experiments and calculations on related dot systems. Configuration interaction calculations using uncorrelated basis sets are found to be severely limited in calculating decay rates.

• Received 1 December 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.73.165305