Temperature and Strain Effects on Polarization of Light Emitted by AlGaN Bulk Layers and Quantum Wells

We present a systematic analysis of the effect of temperature and tensile/compressive strain on polarization of light emitted from AlGaN bulk layers and quantum wells. For this purpose, a k· p-based approach is used with rigorous treatment of the k-vector dependence of joint density of states and optical matrix elements. The latter is shown to be critical for accurate calculating the polarization degree of emitted light with and without account of strain effects. The results obtained are validated by comparison with available data.