Effect of external magnetic field on the ground state properties of D  centres in a Gaussian quantum dot Aalu Boda a , Madhusudhan Gorre b , Ashok Chatterjee a,⇑ a School of Physics, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad 500 046, India b PSC & KVSC Govt. College, Nandyal, Kurnool, AP, India article info Article history: Received 13 March 2014 Accepted 17 March 2014 Available online 27 March 2014 Keywords: Quantum dot Negative donor complex Gaussian confinement Binding energy Variational calculation abstract The binding energies of a negatively charged hydrogenic donor ion (D  ) trapped in a three-dimensional quantum dot with Gaussian confinement in the presence of an external magnetic field are obtained as a function of the quantum dot size and the confine- ment strength and also as a function of the magnetic field by a var- iational method with a simple wave function. A Jastrow-like factor is used to take care of the correlation effect. The results are obtained. The magnetic moment and susceptibility are also obtained for the donor complex. One of the most important objec- tives of this work is to study the effect of the magnetic field on the resultant dipole moment of a D  complex in a Gaussian QD. It is shown that the resultant dipole moment of a D  complex increases as the dot size increases and decreases as the magnetic field increases. The effect of the confinement strength on the resultant dipole moment is also investigated for different values of the magnetic field. Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In the past three decades a great deal of work has been reported on the properties of neutral and negatively charged shallow Coulomb impurities in semiconductor hetero-structures. Imperfections http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.spmi.2014.03.017 0749-6036/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 40 23134356. E-mail address: acsp@uohyd.ernet.in (A. Chatterjee). Superlattices and Microstructures 71 (2014) 261–274 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Superlattices and Microstructures journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/superlattices