Stochastic resonance in a nonequilibrium electron-hole plasma

A photogenerated electron-hole plasma, heated in the process of Auger recombination, is studied. It is shown that in the plasma near the threshold for the appearance of uniform relaxational self-excited oscillations, weak noise transforms into a stochastic sequence of large-amplitude spikes. An additional optical periodic signal with amplitude approximately five times smaller than the noise variance, depending on the form of this signal, transforms these stochastic oscillations into low-amplitude quasiharmonic oscillations or into periodic spike self-excited oscillations of enormous amplitude. Pis’ma Zh. éksp. Teor. Fiz. 70, No. 7, 422–427 (10 October 1999)