Valence bands spin splitting in GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells

A quantitative comparison between different model calculations of valence band states in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures is presented. We demonstrate that a 14-band k.p Hamiltonian using a completely new parameterization based on fits of the tight-binding band structure leads to energy dispersion relations in excellent agreement with experiment, whereas previous parameterizations result in significant deviations. The relevance of the present results to the calculation of spin-related phenomena is discussed.