Phonon-assisted normal incidence intersubband absorption in semiconductor quantum wells

In the presence of a normally incident mid-IR pulsed laser field, phonon-assisted photon absorption by both intrasubband and intersubband phonon scattering of conduction electrons in GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells are predicted. The novel non-resonant and non-linear intersubband absorption is found by including the photon-induced phonon scattering process in a Boltzmann equation for phonon energies smaller than the energy separation between two electron subbands in the quantum well. The predicted phonon-assisted photon absorption by intersubband transitions of electrons from the first to the second subband is a unique feature in quantum-well systems and is expected to have a significant effect on the electron populations in both subbands.     

Electron-interface-optical-phonon interaction in rectangular quantum wire and quantum dot

Under the dielectric continuum model and separation of variables, the interface optical (IO) phonon modes and electron-optical-phonon interaction in rectangular quantum wire and quantum dot embedded in a nonpolar matrix are studied. We found that there exist various types of IO phonon modes in rectangular nanostructures. The IO phonon modes in rectangular quantum wire include IO-propagating (IO-PR) and IO-IO hybrid phonon modes, while the IO phonon modes in rectangular quantum dot contain IO-IO-PR and IO-PR-PR hybrid phonon modes. The results of numerical calculation show that these hybrid phonon modes contain corner optical (CO) phonon modes and edge optical (EO) phonon modes. The potential applications of these results are also discussed.     

One-dimensional band-edge absorption in a doped quantum wire

Low-temperature photoluminescence-excitation spectra are studied in an n-type modulation-doped T-shaped single quantum wire with a gate to tune electron densities. With a nondegenerate one-dimensional (1D) electron gas, the band-edge absorption exhibits a sharp peak structure induced by the 1D density of states. When the dense 1D electron gas is degenerate at a low temperature, we observe a Fermi-edge absorption onset without many-body modifications.     

Polarization dependent absorption spectra in quantum wire structures

The band mixing effect in the valence band of quantum wire structures (QWS) was analyzed. The effective mass of the lowest subband in the wire-axis direction was found to be as small as 0.027 m₀ at the band edge for the first time. This reduced effective mass and the related nonparabolicity of the subband structure play a significant role in determining the exciton properties. The influence of the subband nonparabolicity is shown to be larger for the QWS with a larger cross section because of the reduction of the energy separations and the resultant interactions among the subbands. The dependence of the exciton matrix element on the polarization of the incident photon is discussed.     

Phonon-assisted auger recombination in quantum well semiconductors

Phonon-assisted Auger recombination (AR) is shown to be an important loss mechanism in a quantum well semiconductor in addition to the direct AR. Theoretical investigations demonstrate that it is of the same order of magnitude and has the same temperature dependence as in bulk material, just as direct AR, provided that the material parameters and the carrier concentrations are the same as in the bulk.     

Phonon-assisted thermoelectric effects in strongly interacting quantum dot

The joint effects of the electron-phonon interaction and Kondo effect on the charge and heat transport through a single molecule transistor are investigated by applying the improved canonical transformation and noncrossing approximation technique. We find that the electron-phonon interaction decreases the conductance, thermopower and the Wiedemann-Franz law in the Kondo regime due to the splitting and the decreasing of the main Kondo peak. However, the thermoelectric figure of merit achieves enhancement with the electron-phonon coupling strength increasing. In addition, the dip value of the thermopower at the Kondo temperature for the different electron-phonon coupling strength can give a straightforward reliable estimate of the electron-phonon coupling strength.     

Phonon-assisted radiative electron-hole recombination in silicon quantum dots

The temperature dependence of the photoluminescence (PL) spectrum of silicon quantum dots (QDs) is studied both theoretically and experimentally, and the time of the corresponding electron-hole radiative recombination is calculated. The dependence of the recombination time on the QD size is discussed. The experiment shows that the PL intensity decreases by approximately 60% as the temperature increases from 77 to 293 K. The calculated characteristic recombination time has only a weak temperature dependence; therefore, the decrease in the PL intensity is associated primarily with nonradiative transitions. It is also shown that the phonon-assisted radiation is much more efficient than the zero-phonon emission. Moreover, the zero-phonon recombination time depends on the QD radius R as R⁸, whereas the phonon-assisted recombination time depends on this radius as R³.     

Phonon-assisted damping of Rabi oscillations in semiconductor quantum dots

Electron-phonon interaction is a major source of optical dephasing in semiconductor quantum dots. Within a density matrix theory the electron-phonon interaction is considered up to the second order of a correlation expansion, allowing the calculation of the quantum kinetic dephasing dynamics of optically induced nonlinearities in GaAs quantum dots for arbitrary pulse strengths and shapes. We find Rabi oscillations renormalized and a damping that depends on the input pulse strength, a behavior not known from exponential dephasing mechanisms.     

Phonon-assisted intersubband transitions in wurtziteGaN/InxGal_xN quantum wells

A detailed numerical calculation on the phonon-assisted intersubband transition rates of electrons in wurtzite GaN/In x Ga 1 x N quantum wells is presented. The quantum-confined Stark effect, induced by the built-in electric field, and the ternary mixed crystal effect are considered. The electron states are obtained by iteratively solving the coupled Schrdinger and Poisson equations. The dispersion properties of each type of phonon modes are considered in the derivation of Fermi’s golden rule to evaluate the transition rates. It is indicated that the interface and half-space phonon scattering play an important role in the process of 1-2 radiative transition. The transition rate is also greatly reduced by the built-in electric field. This work can be helpful for the structural design and simulation of new semiconductor lasers.     

Phonon-assisted optical absorption in silicon from first principles

The phonon-assisted interband optical absorption spectrum of silicon is calculated at the quasiparticle level entirely from first principles. We make use of the Wannier interpolation formalism to determine the quasiparticle energies, as well as the optical transition and electron-phonon coupling matrix elements, on fine grids in the Brillouin zone. The calculated spectrum near the onset of indirect absorption is in very good agreement with experimental measurements for a range of temperatures. Moreover, our method can accurately determine the optical absorption spectrum of silicon in the visible range, an important process for optoelectronic and photovoltaic applications that cannot be addressed with simple models. The computational formalism is quite general and can be used to understand the phonon-assisted absorption processes in general.     

Phonon-assisted tunneling in the quantum regime of Mn12 acetate

Longitudinal or transverse magnetic fields applied on a crystal of Mn12 acetate allows one to observe independent tunnel transitions between m = -S+p and m = S-n-p ( n = 6-10, p = 0-2 in longitudinal field and n = p = 0 in transverse field). We observe a smooth transition (in longitudinal) from coherent ground-state to thermally activated tunneling. Furthermore, two ground-state relaxation regimes show a crossover between quantum spin relaxation far from equilibrium and near equilibrium, when the environment destroys multimolecule correlations. Finally, we stress that the complete Hamiltonian of Mn12 should contain odd spin operators of low order.     

Electrons in a curvilinear quantum wire

The adiabatic motion of electrons in curvilinear quantum wires was studied. It was assumed that the cross section of a wire was constant along its length. The potential that limited electron motion across a wire and the shape of the cross section of the wire were considered arbitrary, while the curvature and the torsion (defined as the derivative of the cross section rotation angle with respect to the length) were assumed to be small. An effective nonrelativistic Hamiltonian for the motion of electrons along a wire with the conservation of transverse quantum numbers was obtained. The spin-orbit coupling Hamiltonian related to the curvature and torsion of a wire was found. Particular cases of a rectilinear twisted quantum wire with a noncircular cross section and a curvilinear quantum wire on a plane were studied. Various transverse potential models limiting the motion of electrons were considered. In particular, the coefficients of the effective Hamiltonian for quantum wires with rectangular and circular cross sections and hard walls and for wires with a parabolic potential were found.     

Tunable quantum dot resonator embedded in a quantum wire

Combined quantum wire and quantum dot system is theoretically predicted to show unique conductance properties associated with Coulomb interactions. We use a split gate technique to fabricate a quantum wire containing a quantum dot with two tunable potential barriers in a two-dimensional electron gas. We observe the effects of the quantum dot cavity on the electron transport through the quantum wire, such as Coulomb oscillations near the pinch-off voltage and periodic conductance oscillations on the first conductance plateau.     

Exciton states and excitonic absorption spectra in a cylindrical quantum wire under transverse electric field

The temperature dependence of the resistance in trilayer graphene is observed under different applied gate voltages. At small gate voltages the resistance decreases with increasing temperature due to the increase in carrier concentration resulting from thermal excitation of electron-hole pairs, characteristic of a semimetal. At large gate voltages excitation of electron-hole pairs is suppressed, and the resistance increases with increasing temperature because of the enhanced electron-phonon scattering, characteristic of a metal. We find that the simple model with overlapping conduction and valence bands, each with quadratic dispersion relations, is unsatisfactory. Instead, we conclude that impurities in the substrate that create local puddles of higher electron or hole densities are responsible for the residual conductivity at low temperatures. The best fit is obtained using a continuous distribution of puddles. From the fit the average of the electron and hole effective masses can be determined.     

Pressure induced optical absorption and refractive index changes of a shallow hydrogenic impurity in a quantum wire

Pressure induced binding energy of a hydrogenic impurity in an InAs/GaAs quantum wire is investigated. Calculations are performed using Bessel functions as an orthonormal basis within a single band effective mass approximation using variational method. Photoionization cross-section of the hydrogenic impurity in the influence of pressure is studied. The total optical absorption and the refractive index changes as a function of normalized photon energy between the ground and the first excited state in the presence of pressure are analyzed. The optical absorption coefficients and the refractive index changes strongly depend on the incident optical intensity and pressure. The occurred blue shift of the resonant peak due to the pressure gives the information about the variation of two energy levels in the quantum well wire. The optical absorption coefficients and the refractive index changes are strongly dependent on the incident optical intensity and the pressure.     

Phonon-assisted decoherence in the production of polarization-entangled photons in a single semiconductor quantum dot

We theoretically investigate the production of polarization-entangled photons through the biexciton cascade decay in a single semiconductor quantum dot. In the intermediate state the entanglement is encoded in the polarizations of the first emitted photon and the exciton, where the exciton state can be effectively "measured" by the solid-state environment through the formation of a lattice distortion. We show that the resulting loss of entanglement becomes drastically enhanced if the phonons contributing to the lattice distortion are subject to elastic scatterings at the device boundaries, which might constitute a serious limitation for quantum-dot based entangled-photon devices.     

High-frequency conductance of a thin rectangular metal wire

The high-frequency conductance of a straight metal wire of rectangular cross section is calculated. The case when the transverse dimensions of the wire are several times smaller than its length is considered. The condition of diffuse reflection of electrons from the internal surfaces of the wire are taken as the boundary conditions for the problem. The limiting cases are considered, and the results are discussed.