The optical exciton Aharonov-Bohm effect—i.e., an oscillatory component in the energy of optically active (bright) states—is investigated in nanorings. It is shown that a small effective electron mass, strong confinement of the electron, and high barrier for the hole, achieved, e.g., by an InAs nanoring embedded in an AlGaSb quantum well, are favorable for observing the optical exciton Aharonov-Bohm effect. The second derivative of the exciton energy with respect to the magnetic field is utilized to extract Aharonov-Bohm oscillations even for the lowest bright state unambiguously. A connection between the theories for infinitesimal narrow and finite width rings is established. Furthermore, the magnetization is compared to the persistent current, which oscillates periodically with the magnetic field and confirms thus the nontrivial (connected) topology of the wave function in the nanoring.

• Received 15 May 2006

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.74.115416