Electronic structure of self-assembled quantum dots: comparison between density functional theory and diffusion quantum Monte Carlo

We have calculated the exchange, correlation, and total electronic energy of a realistic InAs self-assembled quantum dot embedded in a GaAs matrix as a function of the number of electrons in the dot. The many-body interactions have been treated using the local spin density approximation (LSDA) to density functional theory (DFT) and diffusion quantum Monte Carlo (DMC), so that we may quantify the error introduced by LSDA. The comparison shows that the LSDA errors are about 1–2 meV per electron for the system considered. These errors are small enough to justify the use of LSDA calculations to test models of self-assembled dots against current experimental measurements.