Choose the growth direction as and the well as . In the envelope function approximation, write a subband state as , where is the band-edge cell-periodic Bloch factor. The infinite square well has
The envelope has the same shape for electron and hole states: changing their effective masses changes the eigenenergies, but not these infinite-well eigenfunctions. With in-plane polarization, the leading interband momentum matrix element acts on the Bloch factors, while the slow envelopes give
orthonormality therefore yields the infinite-well interband selection rule . A nonzero band-level matrix element is still required; the overlap rule does not replace polarization selection rules. Finite barriers can make electron and hole envelopes different, and interface asymmetry or band mixing can relax this ideal same-index rule.