Research Abstract:
The polarization of a quantum electron confined in a one dimensional potential well in the presence of a uniform electric field is calculated numerically. It is shown that the negative polarization reportedi n the literature for weak fields for all excited subband states is an artifact of using infinite-barrier model. Our numerical work gives resultsi n agreement with previous calculations for the infinite-barrier potential but it yields positive polarization for all values of the applied field for finite-barrier case.