The effect of an external electric field F on the excitonic photoluminescence
(PL) spectra of a symmetric coupled double quantum well (DQW) is investigated
both theoretically and experimentally. We show that the variational method in a
two-particle electron-hole wave function approximation gives a good agreement
with measurements of PL on a narrow DQW in a wide interval of F including
flat-band regime. The experimental data are presented for an MBE-grown DQW
consisting of two 5 nm wide GaAs wells, separated by a 4 monolayers (MLs) wide
pure AlAs central barrier, and sandwiched between Ga_{0.7}Al_{0.3}As layers.
The bias voltage is applied along the growth direction. Spatially direct and
indirect excitonic transitions are identified, and the radius of the exciton
and squeezing of the exciton in the growth direction are evaluated
variationally. The excitonic binding energies, recombination energies,
oscillator strengths, and relative intensities of the transitions as functions
of the applied field are calculated. Our analysis demonstrates that this simple
model is applicable in case of narrow DQWs not just for a qualitative
description of the PL peak positions but also for the estimation of their
individual shapes and intensities.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures (accepted in Phys. Rev. B