We report on low-temperature micro-photoluminescence (mu-PL) measurements of InAs/GaAs quantum dots (QDs) exposed to a lateral external electric field. It is demonstrated that the QDs PL signal could be increased several times by altering the external and/or the internal electric field, which could be changed by an additional infra-red laser. A model which accounts for an essentially faster lateral transport of the photo-excited carriers achived in an external electric field is employed to explain the observed effects. The results obtained suggest that the lateral electric fields play a major role for the dot luminescence intensity measured in our experiment --- a finding which could be used to tailor the properties of QD-based optoelectronic applications. This work was supported by grants from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Reseach (SSF) and Swedish Research Council (VR). E.S.M gratefully achnowledges financial support from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and partial support from the program "Low-Dimensional Quantum Structures" of the Russian Academy of Sciences. PACS: 78.67.Hc, 73.50.Gr, 78.55.Cr
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